


Five Goats

by Josselin



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 04:20:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 32,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12100584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin
Summary: In which Laurent runs away from Arles, hides out in Vask, encounters some goats, tries to regain his throne, and is wooed by the prince of Akielos, not precisely in that order.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Amazing art by [@pigmi](http://pigmi.tumblr.com/)! 
> 
> Thank you to [@artmaniaa](http://artmaniaa.tumblr.com/) for betaing!
> 
> And a giant thanks to [@seepunkrun](https://seepunkrun.tumblr.com/) for emotional support while I was writing and repeatedly wanted to give up, as well as plot advice and a critical read over.

Afterward, Laurent realized that he should have remained quiet. If he had been able to remain quiet, he might have been able to do something else. Hide until his uncle had gone, bring some evidence of what had happened to the members of the council, speak up for his brother.

But in the moment, when Laurent was fourteen and saw his uncle cut down Auguste, unarmed and in the middle of his own palace, Laurent cried out helplessly.

Laurent’s uncle saw Laurent in the doorway. Even as Auguste was falling to the ground, he tried to look out for Laurent. Auguste yelled, “Run,” and Laurent ran. 

His uncle was behind him and Laurent's eyes were clouded with tears and his heart was racing. He did not know where to go. He snuck into a hidden servant’s closet for a moment, listened to his uncle go by in the hallway, and then tried to bring his breathing under control. This was only a temporary hiding place. His uncle could employ the entire palace guard to look for him. He couldn’t go to his rooms or to Auguste’s chambers the way he often did when evading his uncle. He wished that he had set up his own guard. He had told Auguste that they should bring in their own men, and Auguste had laughed and said he worried too much.

Finally, unsure of what to do, Laurent emerged from the closet and after a cautious look both directions in the hallway, made his way to the infirmary.

The physician Paschal was there, wearing a giant white hat in the shape of a mushroom. 

Paschal turned when Laurent entered the room. “Are you injured?” Paschal asked. Paschal had tended him before, when Laurent had fallen from his horse or taken a hard blow in fencing. Paschal had tended his mother when she had been sick with fever the two years prior, and in the final days of the fever Paschal had not left her bedside. Paschal had tended Laurent when—Laurent tried not to think about that.

“I need help,” said Laurent. He felt frantic. His heart was beating too fast.

“What’s wrong?”

“Auguste is hurt,” Laurent said, and the physician grabbed his bag of medicines and let Laurent drag him by the hand out of the infirmary. Laurent became cautious as they approached the salon where he had seen Auguste fall. 

There were soldiers wearing the red livery of his uncle’s men in the room with Auguste; they were talking. 

“He’s truly dead?” said one.

“His uncle said it was a fight with his younger brother.”

Laurent stiffened, and he was about to object when Paschal clapped a hand over his mouth.

The soldiers continued talking, but Laurent couldn’t make out what they said because Paschal was wrestling him away from that chamber. They paused to argue in the hall.

“I--” Laurent started.

“Quiet,” Paschal said.

“That’s not true,” said Laurent, moderating his tone to a furious whisper.

“You saw what truly happened?”

“It was my uncle,” said Laurent.

Paschal frowned thoughtfully for a moment. This time he was the one who took Laurent’s hand, and he tugged Laurent off through the hallways. They took one of the servants’ passages past the kitchens and out a back door to the stables. Before exiting, Paschal grabbed an apron and a kitchen hat from a peg on the wall. 

“Put these on.” The apron was too big for Laurent and looked like an ill-fitting dress. The hat kept slipping over his eyes. 

Paschal led him to the stable, and then to a different horse than Laurent had ever ridden. 

A stablehand came by and helped Paschal with a saddle. Laurent tried to edge out of sight behind the horse. 

“Someone hurt?” said the stablehand.

“A hard labor in the city,” said Paschal, and he took the horse to the courtyard, mounted, and settled Laurent on the horse behind him. 

“Hide your face and keep hold of the satchel,” Paschal said, and Laurent did. 

They were going to be caught, Laurent feared. Paschal nodded at the guards at the gate to the courtyard, and Laurent pressed his face to Paschal’s shoulder and tried to half cover it with the woolen hat. In the city, they passed three separate sets of the King’s Guard on patrol, and each time Laurent’s heart caught in his throat. 

At the city gate, the doors were being closed just as they arrived. 

“We need to get through,” said Paschal. 

“The Regent said to close the gates,” said the guard. The door was lowering ever so slowly behind him.

“It’s a medical emergency,” said Paschal. “I’m a doctor.” 

The guard seemed skeptical. He was a short man with a trim beard. The door was lowered to the height of a man now. Laurent thought about sliding off of the horse and running under it.

“This one’s mother needs treating in Basson,” said Paschal, nodding over his shoulder at Laurent and naming a nearby village.

“And why would a palace physician be treating a villager?” said the guard.

“The lady in question is a friend of the prince’s,” said Paschal, pausing slightly around the word friend suggestively. Behind him, Laurent stiffened at the implication that Auguste would sully himself by dallying dishonorably with a villager, but the guard apparently found this believable enough.

The guard called out to one of the men winding the wheel to close the gate. “Hold!”

The progress of the door stopped. 

“You won’t be able to get back in tonight,” the guard warned Paschal. Paschal nodded.

“Let them through,” said the guard, and the other men began turning the wheel the other way to raise the gate slightly so they could leave.

Laurent pulled the hat down over his hair more firmly. 

They rode through the gate. The door was only partially raised; they had to duck a bit to fit under it.

Outside the city, Laurent could hear the wheel begin to screech again as they lowered the door again. The gate closed behind them with a final-sounding thud as the door hit the ground. 

Laurent waited. The horse made progress down the road toward Basson. 

“Where are we going?” said Laurent. 

“I have a friend who can help us,” said Paschal.

“Is my brother really dead?” Laurent interrupted. His voice cracked as he spoke. 

Paschal seemed to hesitate before answering. “I suspect he is, yes.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Laurent said.

“What did happen?” said Paschal.

“My uncle had sent for me,” said Laurent. Paschal made a noise Laurent couldn’t recognize. “I went to meet him in the salon. I was early, though. The guard found me more quickly than he expected. And I heard Auguste in the salon with my uncle. They were arguing about something. I don’t know what it was. And then when I was in the doorway, I saw my uncle cut him.” Laurent gestured briefly to demonstrate how it had happened.

“And Auguste said ‘Run’ and my uncle still had the knife and he saw me there in the doorway, so I ran.” Laurent’s eyes were wet.

“Running was the best thing for you to do,” said Paschal. 

“I couldn’t save him,” said Laurent, choking on a half-sob.

“He saved you,” said Paschal.


	2. Chapter 2

_Four years later._

Nikandros had some experience with border skirmishes. His prince, Damianos, had been leading men successfully since nineteen, which had been the time that Nikandros—slightly older than Damen—had successfully completed his service at the Kingsmeet. Nikandros had been beside Damen ever since, and consequently, Nikandros had seen a fair amount of action along the border. King Theomedes had long dreamed of taking back Delpha, the disputed borderland between Akielos and Vere, but had held back out of a desire for peace with Vere. As much peace as Akielos could have, at least. 

Damen came regularly to the border on patrol duty, touring the area at least once a year, and this gave Nikandros more field experience than a typical captain gained when the country was not at war. He patrolled the border with his men, inspected the keeps, and commanded the defense when they were raided.

Raids were not at all uncommon. The Veretians were paying the Vaskians to harass the Akielon border, which was probably intended as a strategy to keep the Vaskians from raiding Vere itself, since both Vere and Akielos bordered the Vaskian mountains and foothills.

This particular skirmish had been rather more vicious than most. The Vaskian riders had had the advantage of a hill, and somehow they had managed to evade Nikandros’s men on patrol and station themselves in the valley, and then crest the hill and come down upon the Akielons as they moved toward the river. 

Nikandros had not been commanding the defense, since Damianos had been riding with them when they had been set upon. Nikandros was glad that Damianos had been there. His prince had a brilliance for field strategy that Nikandros had not seen in other men. When their small patrol of thirty had been raided, the direction of the fighting might easily have gone the other way.

But the Akielons were victorious. At the conclusion of the fighting Nikandros was pleased to see that there were no casualties among their own men and only seven wounded. The supplies had been unharmed. They had not lost any horses. Damianos was one of the wounded, with a bleeding slice on his upper arm, and he tolerated Nikandros tying a cloth around it to staunch the bleeding while he cleaned his sword. 

Pallas, one of the youngest soldiers in Nikandros’s troop, came up with a report that the Vaskians they’d taken captive in the battle had been tied up and inspected.

“How many are there?” said Damen.

“Seven, exalted,” said Pallas, looking honored to even be speaking to his prince. The other Vaskians had managed to retreat on horseback after the raid. 

“I want to see them,” said Damen. Nikandros finished bandaging his arm and they followed Pallas to where the prisoners had been arranged.

Damen began walking up and down the line, slowly, looking at the women.

Nikandros raised his voice; he spoke better Vaskian than Damen did. “Does one of you speak for all of you?”

An older woman nodded her head. Nikandros nodded at Pallas and he helped the woman to her feet, ensuring she wouldn’t struggle even though her hands were tied behind her. 

“What is your name?” said Nikandros.

She had a gravely voice. “Halvik.”

Damen had made it up and down the line of prisoners and returned to stand next to Nikandros.

“This is their leader, Halvik,” said Nikandros.

Damen looked Halvik over, and then turned his attention to the woman on the ground next to Halvik. 

“This is the one that I was fighting,” said Damen, nodding.

Nikandros gave the woman Damen indicated a more interested look. Anyone who was good enough to fight Damen, injure him, and remain uninjured themselves was a fighter worthy of admiration. Nikandros nodded to Pallas, and Pallas helped the other woman to her feet as well.

She was tall; Halvik only came to her shoulder. She was dressed as the other Vaskians, in worn leathers and a brown tunic. She had light scarf around her neck. Unlike the other Vaskians, she was wearing a woolen hat. As Nikandros looked at her face, he realized that her features did not seem traditionally Vaskian. She had Veretian heritage, perhaps, or from Kempt.

“What’s your name?” said Damen. His accent in Vaskian was poor, but he was easily understood. The woman with the hat spat on the ground in front of him. Nikandros and Pallas each put their hands on their weapons; Damen gestured for them to hold. 

“What is this one called?” Nikandros said to Halvik.

“Does it matter?” said Halvik. “You are not going to take us as prisoners back to Akielos.”

“It matters,” said Damen. He turned to the woman wearing the hat. “You fought well,” he said. “You sliced my arm.”

“I was aiming for your neck,” said the woman. 

Nikandros looked to Damen for his reaction, wondering if he should let Pallas take out his weapon and teach this one some respect. Illogically, Damen was smiling at the woman. 

“Tell me your name.”

“No.”

It was in poor form for Damen to negotiate with one of the Vaskians who was not their leader, but he seemed to be proceeding anyway.

“I haven’t introduced myself,” said Damen. “My name is Damianos.”

“I know who you are, Damianos,” the woman said.

“I want to invite you to eat with me,” said Damen. He spoke slowly in Vaskian, picking each of his words carefully. “I need your name to make a proper invitation.”

The woman had to tip her head back slightly to meet Damen’s eyes, but she did this. She seemed completely unintimidated by meeting a prince and met his gaze with her jaw set. “I’m not telling you my name.”

Halvik interrupted. “This one is called Sparrow. But you cannot take one of my women away from the rest and expect to retain any honor.”

Damen turned back to Halvik. “You can come also. And him,” Damen pointed at Nikandros. “Is that enough chaperones for us to eat together?”

Halvik grunted agreement, and Damen turned away and back toward the camp. Halvik followed.

The woman wearing the hat didn’t move immediately. Pallas reached for her arm to guide her, and she shook off his grasp. 

Halvik turned her head. “Come,” she said, and Sparrow followed.

The four of them sat down around a fire some of the men had lit for the prince. Squires brought over tin plates of food. Damen courteously offered food first to his guests. Sparrow watched Halvik carefully and only ate after Halvik had begun.

“Thank you for accepting my hospitality,” said Damen. His eyes were resting on Sparrow. There was a quality to his gaze that Nikandros had seen before, when he spotted a favorite slave or a woman he was wooing. There was another quality to his gaze that Nikandros had not seen before, and he was not sure he could put a word to it.

Halvik shrugged. “If you are going to kill us,” she said, accepting a wineskin and taking a drink, “we might as well not be hungry.”

“I don’t plan to kill you,” said Damen. 

“Though if you attack us again, we will not hesitate,” said Nikandros, trying to keep Damen from becoming too foolish.

Halvik stared at Damen for a moment. Then she seemed to come to a decision and took another bite of food. “You can only court her if you let us go and provide a suitable courting gift.”

Nikandros sat up suddenly, turning to Damen, ready to object that Halvik had misunderstood.

Damen’s eyes were locked with Sparrow’s. “What type of gift would suit?” said Damen.

Halvik pursed her lips. “Five goats,” she said.

Damen laughed. “Agreed.”

Sparrow spun on Halvik. “I refuse to be traded for five goats,” she hissed.

Halvik pursed her lips again. “Five goats and whatever she wants.”

Damen’s eyes were still on Sparrow. “Is there something I can offer you?”

“I will think on it,” Sparrow said, and she set the tin plate she’d been eating from down on the ground between her and Nikandros, and walked away from the fire. Nikandros followed. By the time he caught up with, she was cutting the ties of her companions with a knife she’d kept from the meal. Pallas was looking on and worrying strenuously. 

“Captain!” Pallas said as Nikandros approached. “She—the prisoners—I—”

“It’s all right, Pallas.” 

“Yes, sir,” said Pallas, relaxing.

“The prince has agreed to let the prisoners go, without their weapons.” Damen hadn’t actually said anything about weapons, but Nikandros was not about to let his friend’s lovesickness make him a complete fool. 

“Yes, sir,” Pallas agreed.

“Help her untie the rest of them,” said Nikandros.

Halvik came with Damen a few minutes later, having apparently settled the logistics of the delivery of the goats. 

Halvik looked over her women and spoke with one of them in quick words Nikandros couldn’t catch. 

Sparrow turned to Damen. “Our horses?”

“I am keeping those for now,” said Damen. He had apparently not lost all of his wits yet. 

Sparrow did not seem surprised, and she did not press the matter further. 

The Vaskians left on foot, heading north. Damen watched as they left. Nikandros stood next to him. 

When the women were out of sight, Nikandros sent Pallas back onto patrol. He and Damen were alone. 

“Exalted,” said Nikandros.

“Don’t call me that, old friend,” said Damen.

“Damen,” said Nikandros, using his small name from childhood. “You flirted with our captive.”

“I like her,” said Damen. 

“She tried to kill you earlier today.”

“She’s feisty,” said Damen.

“She tried to kill you and you let her go and you’re giving her five goats.”

“I’m giving Halvik five goats,” Damen corrected.

“This is worse than how you were with Ianora,” said Nikandros.

Damen laughed lightly. “Good night, old friend,” he said.


	3. Chapter 3

Halvik made Laurent come with her when she went to collect the goats from Prince Damianos. Laurent would have preferred not seeing Prince Damianos so soon again after their previous encounter, which began with Laurent trying to slice his neck with a curved sword and concluded with Damianos pressing his lips to the back of Laurent’s hand. 

Halvik grunted and told Laurent that the Prince of Akielos wasn’t bringing goats because he liked looking at Halvik’s beauty, and that Laurent was coming.

Laurent had known Halvik for four years. After he had run away from the palace in Arles with the physician Paschal, Paschal had dressed him in a skirt and kirtle as a girl and passed him to his brother, and then Paschal’s brother had known a tradeswoman who visited Vask and passed Laurent on to her with a story about a Veretian girl caught in bad circumstances and not wanting to raise a bastard amongst the prejudice of her family, and the tradeswoman had passed Laurent on to Halvik.

Halvik had been skeptical of Laurent at first, or had pretended to be so. The tradeswoman had explained Laurent’s story, so Halvik had questioned whether Laurent had hips sufficient to bear the child he was supposedly carrying, and then she had many questions about the nature of the man who had fathered the child. Was he large? Would he father a strong daughter? She asked so many questions of him, grilling him in her tent, that Laurent finally had to trust Paschal’s brother’s promise that Halvik could be trusted, and explain his disguise. 

So Halvik knew his secret, but she didn’t treat him any differently for it. And Laurent knew from four years of living with the clan leader that when she set her jaw in that manner there was no use arguing with her, and so he ended up at the agreed upon spot, waiting for the goats.

Well, technically he and Halvik were somewhat above the agreed-upon spot, perched on the cliff and with their bows ready. Halvik might have been greedy about goats but she wasn’t foolish about the possibility of an ambush. 

The Akielons arrived at the time they had agreed. There were four men. As the riders drew closer Laurent could recognize them individually. Prince Damianos was riding next to his second in command, the man he had called Nikandros. Damianos was easy to pick out due to his size and the way he carried himself as royalty. The other men were dressed as soldiers. One of them was the youngish guard that had watched over the captives when they’d been taken after the skirmish, the man who had helped pull Laurent to his feet when he’d been tied up. That was the guard who was tasked with the responsibility of tugging along five goats on a rope.

If they were the bait in an ambush they didn’t act like it. They rode slowly, to accommodate the pace of the goats. They did not seem to see Laurent or Halvik perched on the cliff—Laurent and Halvik had gone to some effort to achieve that effect—and they were riding easily and talking to each other. Laurent admired Damianos’s horse. The mare was Patran; Patras was famous for its horse breeders. The mare was tall—she would have to be, to suit such a large man—and her form was excellent. Her coat was dark brown and similar in color to Prince Damianos’s hair. 

Auguste had promised Laurent a Patran mare as a birthday gift when he turned fifteen; Laurent had been brilliantly excited about the prospect at the time Auguste had mentioned it and had read everything he could find about Patran horses in the library and then interviewed several of the horse breeders in the market in Arles. He’d intended to call the horse Sparrow.

Halvik gave a whistled call that sounded like a hawk; that was the signal. Laurent lowered his bow, attached it to his back again, and dropped down from the side of the cliff to the grass below. Halvik did the same.

Prince Damianos and his companions seemed startled, as though the two of them had emerged from nowhere.

Damianos recovered from his surprise and nodded respectfully at Halvik and then smiled at Laurent. “Hello.” His Vaskian accent hadn’t improved any since their last conversation.

Halvik did not bother with greetings. “Let me see the goats.”

She made quite a show of inspecting them. She took the rope cord from the Akielon guard and looked over each of the goats in turn. She grumbled as she did it, but Laurent, who knew her well, could tell that inwardly she was very pleased. 

“This one is skinny,” she said, nodding at the fourth goat in the line. 

“So’s that one,” said Damianos’s second in command, nodding at Laurent. Halvik’s eye twitched, which was a sign she was amused. Damianos elbowed his friend. 

“We picked the best goats to offer you,” he said. Damianos did not seem well versed in goats and their positive attributes. He looked to one of his guards for help.

“That one is younger,” said the guard, which Laurent could see was true. “His meat would be more tender.”

Halvik grunted. 

“Will you accept?” said Damianos.

Halvik made an expression that conveyed that it pained her to do so and that she felt she was getting the poor end of the bargain, but she nodded.

Damianos smiled again, looking at Laurent as he did so. His smile was broad and his teeth were straight.

“And you?” said Damianos. “Will you accept?”

“I haven’t told you what I want yet.”

“And what is that?” said Damianos. Halvik was clucking at one of the goats, which meant she was very pleased indeed; the goat brayed back at her.

Laurent licked his lips. He had given this a great deal of thought the night before. There were many ways to turn the prince away and even to let Halvik keep her goats as he did so. Damianos was probably honorable enough—and rich enough, as a prince—that he would consider the matter of the goats finished even if Laurent simply declined him outright with no further explanation.

That would certainly be the most sensible path. And yet, despite his contentment with the clan life, there was something that Laurent dreamed about. He was not sure how he could ever achieve his dream, but he thought of it whenever the clan raided in Vere and he saw children who were ill-clothed or hungry or sick. But if anyone was in a position to help him achieve the dream, it was a prince, and so he could not resist using Damianos’s open-ended offer and obvious interest. 

“I would like a favor,” said Laurent.

Damianos raised an eyebrow. “A favor?”

Damianos’s friend Nikandros seemed bothered by this proposal, and he should be. The favor Laurent intended to ask for was certainly just as extravagant as Nikandros feared, and Laurent had no intention of taking the prince’s suit seriously. 

Damianos himself was less cautious. “All right.”

“Damen,” Nikandros said, half-warning and half-dismayed.

“Will you tell me what favor you wish?” said Damianos.

Laurent shook his head. 

Halvik interrupted their negotiations. “This goat needs to be milked.”

Damianos turned his attention on her. “Clan chief Halvik,” he said respectfully. “How would you recommend I court your Sparrow? Is there a traditional way, in Vask?”

Halvik eyed Laurent narrowly, then eyed Damianos, and then looked again at the goats. She shrugged one shoulder. “Come to the coupling fires with us.”


	4. Chapter 4

Nikandros and Laurent shared equally dismayed looks at Halvik’s offer and Damianos’s acceptance of it. Damianos told his guards to share a horse and offered the other to Halvik and Laurent, and the six of them proceeded on horseback back to the camp. 

Laurent attempted to use the proximity of riding pillion with Halvik to voice his objections. Nikandros was clearly trying to catch the eye of his prince to do the same; Damianos was resolutely ignoring him and making inane conversation about things such as the color of the sky and the mildness of the weather. 

“They will know where the camp is,” said Laurent, under his breath.

Halvik shrugged. “Then we’ll move.”

“Is mild weather good for goats?” said Damianos. 

Halvik shrugged again. “Goats are very adaptable.”

Damianos nodded as if this were a reasonable topic for conversation. “I see. That’s very useful.”

Courting Damianos and retaining his interest long enough to convince him to do Laurent’s favor might be easier than he anticipated.

They arrived at the camp.

Clanswomen stopped by to see the visitors that had returned with Halvik and Laurent, and there were a lot of admiring and lascivious looks given to the Akielon men. The Akielons were also looking around with interest, taking in the camp and the women tucked away in the foothills.

Halvik handed the cord with the goats to Maresh, who led them off to be milked and added to the collection of other livestock. Halvik then nodded to Kashel, who was one of the women admiring the visitors. “Show them Vaskian hospitality,” she said. Kashel and some of the other women sprung into action, offering to take the men’s horses and care for them, to help them take off their armor and be more comfortable, and to wash up before dinner.

Damianos raised a hopeful eyebrow at Laurent as he was led away, and Laurent shook his head. He had no intention of helping to wash Damianos. He avoided the spot by the river where the women bathed in general, though Damianos wouldn’t know that. Some of the women probably knew, as Halvik did, but he didn’t like to call attention to his secret by undressing in front of them. And if he undressed in front of Damianos, then he would know, and the entire plan would fail. Also, Laurent needed to talk to Halvik.

Halvik retreated to her tent. Laurent followed her. 

“Why did you invite them back to the camp?” said Laurent.

Halvik did not seem to understand why Laurent was upset. “You accepted his gift.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to have sex with him,” said Laurent. 

Halvik’s brows creased. “That is how courting works.” There was no Vaskian word for courting; she pronounced the Akielon derivative that Damianos had been using as though it were foreign. “You ask for a gift, you decide if the gift is good enough, and then you take him to the fire to have his daughters.”

Laurent made a strangled noise. “That is not how it works!”

Halvik’s expression showed sudden understanding. “Oh. You are a virgin.”

“What?” said Laurent.

“You are frightened,” said Halvik. “Do not be frightened. He is a good choice and will have strong daughters.”

Laurent could feel himself flushing red and he hated it. Did she truly think— “Halvik,” said Laurent. “None of that matters for me, remember?”

Halvik pursed her lips, as if she’d truly forgotten. She made a considering noise. “Well,” she said. “You will want lots of oil.”

Laurent felt his face grow even warmer. “No,” he said.

“Yes,” said Halvik. “You will definitely want oil.”

“No,” said Laurent, “I mean, I can’t, with him. He doesn’t know about me.”

Halvik was not taking this seriously. She shrugged. “Tell him to take you from behind. Men are easily distracted at the coupling fire. He won’t care if you have extra parts.”

“He will care,” Laurent said. “He can’t know.”

Halvik frowned. “Let him fuck one of the others, then. Maresh has better hips for children than you anyway.”

“No, that is not the plan—” said Laurent.

Halvik interrupted him. “You are trying to keep an excellent horse that you refuse to ride yourself and you won’t let anyone else exercise him either.”

“He’s a man, not a horse,” said Laurent.

“Men. Horses.” Halvik’s tone implied there was little difference. “If you do not want to fuck him,” said Halvik, "then what use is he to you?”

Laurent was not yet ready to reveal his plan, even to Halvik, who had been a staunch defender of his since he had arrived. “Men have other uses.”

Halvik’s expression conveyed her significant doubt about that assertion, and Laurent had no opportunity to argue with her any further, because one of the other clanswomen had come to the tent to ask Halvik about something else. 

Laurent left Halvik’s tent feeling dissatisfied, only to have Kashel catch him by the arm and offer to paint his face. 

Laurent liked paint. It made him look less like himself, which he liked. And Kashel was one of the best artists in the clan, so he followed her agreeably enough and held his face still and his eyes closed patiently while she hummed to herself and applied kohl to his features. Kashel was pregnant with her first child and occasionally paused to rub her stomach as she worked.

When she was finished, Laurent rewrapped his scarf around his neck. Kashel pronounced her work “very good” and smiled at Laurent. 

“If you have a prince’s daughters,” said Kashel, “does that mean your children are royalty?” It was an unusual question for a Vaskian. The Vaskians placed little importance on who fathered their children. They liked for the men to be strong and virile, but there was little sense of family heritage or of nobility in the clan, where everything was communal and leadership was based on merit. Any familial bonds a clan member had were with her mother and her mother’s sisters and their families. The idea of a woman inheriting something like a title from her father was a fanciful notion indeed.

_I’m royalty,_ Laurent thought to himself, unbidden, and then he squashed that notion. He hadn’t had such a rebellious thought about his own identity in a long time. His hope for Damianos’s favor was getting the best of him.

“I’m not going to have his daughters,” said Laurent.

Kashel clucked at him. “Don’t be foolish! You look beautiful; he will want to give you his daughters.” She was patting her own stomach again absentmindedly. 

Laurent tried to take her sentiment in the way she intended it. “Thank you.”

Kashel pulled off his woolen hat, ignored Laurent’s objection, and began braiding his hair. “You have let your hair become very messy,” she scolded. “And you are not wearing any beads or feathers.” Kashel must have considered this a significant lack, because she produced some of her own from her bag of paints and began adding them to the braid. 

Laurent was beginning to smell meat cooking and someone was starting on the drums; it was time for the feast. When Kashel had decided Laurent’s hair was satisfactory, the two of them for the fires near the food.

The Akielons were also being led to the fires and they seemed uncomfortable. The clanswomen must have hopes that the Akielons would join them at the coupling fires, because they had dressed the Akielons accordingly, bathing them and giving them loincloths in the style that indicated they wished them to be available after the meal. 

Damianos looked pleased to spot Laurent coming to the fires with Kashel; he smiled at Laurent. Laurent reminded himself that his plan hinged on Damianos being not just willing to fuck him but to go to war for him, and forced himself to smile back. 

Halvik told Damianos to join her on her dais; he sat down next to her obediently. Halvik then crooked a finger at Laurent and summoned him to her other side. Damianos smiled again at their seating arrangement. 

The other Akielons were claimed by various women and led to spots near one or another of the fires. The feast began. 

Damianos kept up a stream of inane chatter through much of the meal. He asked about the food as the dishes were passed around. What was this meat? How was it spiced? He made pleased noises about the flavor and complimented the taste. And then again. The sun fell below the horizon and they built up the fires. More hakesh was poured. Laurent declined. 

Laurent watched also the other Akielons. Damianos’s second in command Nikandros was beginning to relax and laugh at the antics of some of the women sitting next to him. 

Halvik offered Damianos a dish of meat. “Oh, and what is this?” said Damianos.

“You have eaten it already,” said Laurent. It was the same lamb dish he’d happily consumed earlier.

Halvik narrowed her eyes at Laurent and spoke in Veretian. “You must be more polite.”

Laurent narrowed his eyes back at her. “He’s just a barbarian who can’t make decent conversation,” he said, also in Veretian.

Halvik might have said something else, but Damianos spoke up. “I’m a barbarian who speaks Veretian, though,” he said, fluently, in Veretian.

Laurent could feel himself flushing and hoped that it was dark enough that his embarrassment wasn’t visible in the firelight.

“Is there a topic you prefer to discuss?” said Damianos, continuing in Veretian. “Philosophical tomes?”

Laurent’s manners were not usually improved by feeling embarrassed, and his reply was snippy. “As though you’re familiar with Bahrein’s theories,” he said.

“On light or on substance?” said Damianos, raising an eyebrow, and Laurent was now almost certain that Damianos could see him flushing, regardless of the firelight.

Halvik grunted. “The two of you are well matched.”

Laurent glared at Damianos, then at Halvik, and then got up and stepped off of the dais and retreated into the darkness away from the fires.

Behind him, he could hear Nikandros happily accepting Maresh’s overtures and the youngest Akielon guard insisting that he preferred men and being offered more hakesh by one of the women who hoped that would make him more flexible. The whole camp felt soaked with sex, it reminded Laurent momentarily of the Veretian court in Arles, the few times he had snuck into the evening entertainments there. He found the laden looks and flirtatious atmosphere unpleasantly familiar.

As he often did when he was upset, Laurent made his way to where the horses were grazing. Damianos’s mare was one of the horses grazing closest to the camp, and Laurent couldn’t resist introducing himself to her. When she tolerated him standing near her and then moved to nudge him he obligingly took a brush from his belt.

She was beautiful. Laurent wondered what she was called; undoubtedly Damianos had named her something foolish and utilitarian. She was obviously well cared for, though, as Laurent looked her over. He supposed that was no surprise for a prince’s horse. 

The temptation was too much; Laurent desperately wanted to ride her. He clipped the brush back to his belt and mounted her, wondering if she had ever been ridden without a saddle before. She didn’t seem bothered by the unusual rider.

“Are you stealing my horse?”

It was Damianos. Laurent flushed at having been caught out. “I only meant to ride her,” he said. He would have dismounted, but Damianos had moved close enough to Laurent and the horse that now he was resting a hand on Laurent’s boot. Laurent felt frozen in place.

“You ride without a saddle?” said Damianos. There was a long pause. A hawk called in the distance. Damianos gestured at himself, at the loincloth he was wearing and at his lack of shoes. “I’m not exactly dressed for riding.”

“That’s too bad,” said Laurent. He would have again moved to dismount the horse and fled back to the camp, except Damianos’s grasp on his ankle tightened briefly. 

Damianos mounted the horse himself without any stirrups, ending up behind Laurent. 

Laurent was impressed. He turned to look back over his left shoulder. “I can’t believe you managed to mount the horse without disrupting your loincloth.” He realized as he spoke the Veretian word for loincloth that he’d been speaking Veretian with Damianos since he came upon Laurent with his horse; he hadn’t even noticed.

Damianos laughed. “I didn’t. Don’t look,” he said, and then as Laurent laughed slightly Damianos shifted around behind him, presumably attempting to adjust the small square of fabric for some modesty.

Laurent was not sure what to say, next, so instead he signaled to the horse and led them away from the camp. He felt especially conscious of Damianos behind him on the horse, aware of Damianos’s physical presence in a way that was new. 

Laurent was accustomed to thinking about other people, to analyzing what their motivations were and what they were thinking and how he could persuade them to his viewpoint. Halvik’s drills had trained him after many hours of practice to think about his body when sword fighting, though that awareness had not come naturally to him and Halvik had despaired several times of Laurent ever being able to join the clanswomen on raids. Only an exceptional quantity of hard work had saved him from always having to remain behind in the camp with the children and the goats.

His awareness of Damianos now was something like the way he had to be aware of a fighter’s physical presence in a battle, but different. He felt that Damianos’s skin pressed to the back of his tunic was exceptionally warm. Damianos’s hands were resting lightly on his waist and his own skin there felt hot. It seemed as though the small movements of their bodies as the horse moved and the movement of the horse beneath him were all combined in a giant wave of motion that he couldn’t separate or interpret. The horse’s hooves reminded him of the drums around the coupling fires, and he kept thinking of the fires, of the way Damianos had looked in the firelight relaxing on Halvik’s dais in that ridiculous loincloth.

Halvik’s words earlier that day echoed in his mind and he struggled to banish them. When Halvik had said ‘Tell him to take you from behind,’ Laurent had been too preoccupied with how ridiculous Halvik was being to have truly thought about what that would have been like, but now, with Damianos pressed behind him and almost naked, Laurent was thinking about it. 

Damianos had been letting Laurent direct the horse for the most part, but he signaled the horse to canter suddenly, and Laurent felt the power of her body beneath his thighs. After a few moments, Damianos signaled the horse again.

They slowed to a walk. Damianos leaned in even closer behind him and Laurent could feel Damianos’s breath on the side of his face. “What do you think?”

“Of what?” said Laurent.

“Of my horse,” said Damianos. 

The mare was amazing; Laurent had already fallen half in love with her. “I think I will steal her from you after all,” said Laurent, twisting half around to look at Damianos. Damianos grinned at his reply. 

Laurent had planned how he intended to seduce Damianos. He knew that he had to move slowly, to ensure that he could convince Damianos to fulfill his favor before Damianos tried to coax him into bed and Laurent had to decline or reveal his secret. So Laurent’s plan had been to move from a gentle touch to Damianos’s hand to perhaps kissing the man after a couple of weeks. He hadn’t planned to go riding with the man when he was almost naked, and he hadn’t planned that when they were on the horse together that Damen’s chest would feel so warm or that his eyes would be so deep. 

Laurent let go of his plan, twisted further, leaned in, and pressed his lips to Damianos’s.

Damianos was clearly surprised. His hands lifted off of Laurent’s waist and came to rest on Laurent’s face instead. He made a noise of surprise and then a noise of pleasure, and he pressed his lips against Laurent’s a second time, and then he parted Laurent’s lips with his tongue, and kissed him again. 

It was Laurent’s turn to make a noise of surprise, but he allowed this, and after a moment their lips came apart. Laurent could hear each of them breathing. 

Damianos moved one of his hands from Laurent’s face to his neck, and Laurent felt as though he came to his senses as rapidly as if he had just been dropped into a lake in midwinter. He twisted himself around again—the mare was being astonishingly patient about all of their squirming—and then he dismounted and slid off the horse entirely.

Damianos looked startled “What?”

“No,” said Laurent.

“I didn’t mean—” 

“This was a mistake,” said Laurent. His scarf had become loose when they’d been riding faster, he rearranged it tightly. 

“I didn’t want to upset you,” said Damianos, dismounting beside him. Laurent retreated to the other side of the mare and began walking in the direction from which they had come, back towards the camp and the fires. 

Damianos followed, even though he was barefoot and picking his way through the thin grass and gravel of the foothills could not have been very comfortable. 

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said, and the slower way that he picked his words called Laurent’s attention to the fact that he’d switched languages again back to Vaskian. 

Laurent felt caught between his own fear of being found out and his worry that if he drove Damianos away he would have no more opportunity for his identity to ever even be significant. The memory of how Damianos’s body had felt against his on the horse felt especially vivid. A treacherous half of him wanted to kiss Damianos again. 

They walked back to the camp.


	5. Chapter 5

Nikandros came awake slowly. He felt relaxed and pleasantly warm from the bodies of the women curled around him. He was out of doors. There were quiet sounds from some of the women who were awake in the camp. An animal was bleating further away. 

Nikandros lifted Maresh’s arm off of himself carefully and then tried to edge himself out of the embrace of the two others whose names he did not remember. 

Maresh stirred awake and frowned when she saw him slipping away. “Come back,” she said. “Again,” she offered.

Nikandros laughed and shook his head, and walked away from the embers of the fire and the sleeping women to find a private place to relieve himself. 

After he had taken care of that, he set off looking for two things: his clothes, and his prince. 

Finding his clothes turned out to be less difficult than he had worried. He found some women bathing near the river, and one of them offered him a washcloth and another of them pointed him at a stack of clothing. He put his own clothes back on and took Damen’s with him for when he found the man. Pallas and Aktis had apparently already claimed their outfits.

Nikandros had assumed, when Damen had left the coupling fires in pursuit of Sparrow and not returned, that Damen had found her and persuaded her to spend the night with him. Or possibly Sparrow had decided to finish what she’d started during the raid and had dispatched him neatly the night before. It was hard to say; the woman’s attitude was confounding.

He found Damianos emerging from one of the small tents. Nikandros made a point of glancing at the empty tent behind him, and raised an eyebrow at Damen. 

Damen shook his head sheepishly. “Not now.” He accepted his clothes from Nikandros. “You seem to have enjoyed yourself.”

“The reception here was slightly warmer than what happened with Ianora’s mother,” said Nikandros. Damen laughed good-naturedly. “Are we departing this morning?” said Nikandros.

They were.

Sparrow’s apparent disinterest in Damen did not seem to be discouraging his courtship. Damen found her somehow before they left the Vaskian camp and went over to her specially to say goodbye. He made some comment about stealing a horse that almost caused her to smile.

Damen made arrangements to see her again, as well. Damen took Nikandros and three of the other men hunting two days later, and they were joined a ways from their camp by three Vaskian women led by Sparrow, each of them with hawks on their arms. 

The following day Damianos slipped away from the camp alone but with two horses, and when he returned each of the mares seemed well exercised.

At the end of the week, Damen took Nikandros to market day in the nearby village of Eloy, and Nikandros was not even remotely surprised that suddenly, in between buying a pastry and admiring the quality of some metalwork that Sparrow suddenly appeared beside them. 

When they were returning to where Nikandros had left the men doing drills, he broached the subject with Damen.

“Old friend,” said Nikandros, because Damen flattered him by calling him that and permitting Nikandros to do the same. “What are you doing?”

“We went to the market,” said Damen, trying to look innocent. He wasn’t especially convincing. 

“With Sparrow.” 

“I like her,” said Damen.

“I noticed,” said Nikandros. “Has she told you what favor she wants, yet?”

Damen shook his head. “There is nothing sinister, Nikandros. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your whole life, you’ve never had anyone refuse you,” said Nikandros. “If only Adrastus had known that the true way to entice you was to send beautiful slaves who scoffed at you and refused to have sex.”

“Sex isn’t the only thing that I’m interested in,” said Damen.

Nothing about the last three years of Damen’s life had given any indication this was true, and Nikandros raised an incredulous eyebrow. “She dislikes you, but dislike can have its own appeal. So satisfy your curiosity, and when you have seen that mounting one blond is much like mounting another, we can move on.”

Damen did not say anything, but he had a stubborn expression which did not incline Nikandros to think that Damen was planning a fling with Sparrow and that then they could rapidly continue their planned tour of the border. 

Nikandros had one final line of argument. “What would your father think?”

Damen shot him a betrayed look. Perhaps he had been trying to avoid thinking of Theomedes. “He doesn’t care who I sleep with.”

“He doesn’t,” Nikandros agreed. “But you’re not sleeping with her. You’re delaying your tour of the border and flirting with her and promising her unspecified favors.”

Damen frowned. 

“Are you going to wed her?” Nikandros continued. Theomedes would certainly have an opinion about that. “Make a Vaskian the Queen of Akielos?”

“I—” 

“Or bring her to Ios as your mistress? Set her up to run your household and manage your slaves as Hypermenstra does for Theomedes? Or will you keep her in your harem?”

“Don’t—”

“Have you talked to her about this? What does she think of that notion—”

“Enough!” Damen had raised his voice and his tone was one of command.

Nikandros held Damen’s gaze for a long moment and then let it drop.

They returned to the camp. 

Damen did not explicitly acknowledge that he had listened to any of Nikandros’s arguments, but he began to make arrangements among the men for their patrol to continue along the border, and he wrote a missive to his father briefly describing the Vaskian raid, inquiring if his father’s health had improved at all from his lingering illness, indicating that his own injury was merely ‘a scratch,’ and promising Theomedes that there would be no further unrest in this area and that they were going to proceed south in a few days.

So when Damianos said that he was leaving alone for a day while the men repacked all of the supply wagons, Nikandros did not protest.


	6. Chapter 6

That morning, Laurent and Kashel had been assigned to take the children berry picking. Laurent was often assigned to go berry picking, because he had a sweet tooth and something of a reputation among the clan for coveting more than his share of the berries that were picked. If he went picking he could eat a few while he picked them and enjoy them with only mild teasing for his red lips when he returned. 

Laurent was carrying the smallest one, a toddler boy named Vomas. Kashel had Lensk holding her left hand and Corel holding her right. Three others were skipping ahead of them. 

Vomas had reached an age where he did not have many words but he enjoyed talking. Laurent thought spitefully the he was similar to Damianos in that way. “Berries,” Vomas said. He slurred the word into a single joyful syllable. “Berries berries berries.”

“Yes, we’re going berry picking,” Laurent agreed. 

“More,” said Vomas. “More berries.”

“Sure,” said Laurent. “You can find some more berries.”

“Berries,” Vomas said seriously, and then he tried to poke a finger up Laurent’s nose.

Kashel was embroiled in a slightly more emotionally fraught conversation with Lensk, who was five. Lensk’s older brother had left a few days prior to live with the men’s clan, and Lensk was not adapting well. 

“When will he come back,” said Lensk. 

“We’ll see the men’s clan at festival,” said Kashel. “You can visit with him then.”

“When you’re older you can join the men’s clan,” said Laurent, “And then you will be with him all of the time.”

This was not the reassurance Laurent might have hoped. Lensk started crying. 

“I don’t want to join the men’s clan,” he said. “I want to stay in the women’s clan. Why can’t I be a woman and stay here?”

Kashel gave Laurent a frustrated look, passed Corel’s hand to Laurent, and picked up Lensk despite his age and her belly. “You can,” she told him. “If you want to be a woman you can stay here.”

“But I want him to come back too,” Lensk hiccoughed. 

“Well, he wanted to join the men’s clan,” said Kashel. “Look, there’s one of the berry bushes, can you fill the basket?” She set Lensk down again, and Corel tugged on Laurent’s hand, and the children started filling their mouths and the basket with berries.

“Why would you tell him that?” said Laurent. 

“To fill the basket?”

“That he can stay with the women’s clan if he likes.”

Kashel shrugged. “He can.”

Laurent raised an eyebrow.

“Many boys don’t want to leave their mothers and think they’d like to stay with the women’s clan forever. It is not so uncommon.”

“So it’s better to lie to him?”

“It’s not a lie,” said Kashel. “If he wants to be a woman, he can. He might prefer differently when he reaches the age to join the men’s clan, but he might not.”

Laurent might have questioned her further, but Vomas smushed a berry on Laurent’s lips. “Berries!” said Vomas. “More.”

By the time they returned from berry picking, Lensk had temporarily forgotten his sadness, Laurent’s hair and face were covered with berries thanks to Vomas, and the basket was full. 

Halvik found Laurent at the river, where he was wiping at his face with a piece of cloth and trying to pick berries out of his hair. They weren’t alone; there were a few other women down at the river, washing clothes or setting out leather tunics to dry in the sunlight on the bank.

“That man is here to see you,” Halvik said.

Laurent had spotted Damianos’s mare grazing with the other horses, so his presence in the camp was not a complete surprise. It was completely unrelated to Laurent deciding to take his time being very precise about how he removed berries from his face.

Halvik was still there. “He said he’s leaving.”

Laurent looked up from the water. “Leaving.”

“This is your last chance to have his daughters.”

Laurent rolled his eyes and swiped at his forehead again, trying to get another berry stain. “I’m not going to have his daughters.”

“They would be strong daughters,” said Halvik. “Someone should have them.”

“No,” said Laurent. “When is he leaving?”

“Make him come to the coupling fire before he goes,” said Halvik.

Laurent suddenly lost his patience. “I am not going to have his daughters!” he shouted. 

Laurent’s voice was slightly louder than he had intended, and his shout happened to fall in a momentary lull of the conversation of the other women down by the river, so it echoed into the silence. The others turned to look at him. Halvik was glaring. Looking around sheepishly, Laurent realized that Damianos was approaching the river also, and also probably heard. At least he could pretend that his embarrassed flush was residual berry stain and blame Vomas.

Halvik sniffed and left the bank with a final glare at Laurent. Damianos made his way closer. 

“Hello,” he said.

Laurent took a deep breath. “You’re leaving?”

“I was hoping to talk with you?” said Damianos. 

The women who had started staring at Laurent’s outburst were still eyeing the two of them, and Laurent wanted to get away from here. He walked toward a wooded copse further down the river. Damianos followed. 

They were quiet, as they walked, at first. When they had gone far enough to be out of earshot, Laurent said, again, “You’re leaving?”

“I--” said Damianos. “It doesn’t matter to me, if you don’t want to have children, or if you prefer to adopt or--”

“When?” said Laurent.

Damianos licked his lips. “Tomorrow.”

Laurent closed his eyes for a moment. That meant he had to do it now, he supposed. If he ever wanted to tell Damianos about the favor he wanted, this was the time. He blinked his eyes open again.

Damianos took a step closer to him. Laurent permitted it. Damianos reached out and took his hand, and held it gently. Damianos’s hair was short and he was clean shaven. He was wearing a light Akielon style dress that didn’t cover all of his legs, and a red cape pinned at his shoulder over the rest of it for additional warmth. It was a terrible fashion for any sort of camouflage; he’d be immediately spotted wearing a red cape. Laurent wasn’t sure why his feet weren’t cold, in his sandals. 

Laurent himself was more traditionally dressed, for a Vaskian. He had leather leggings and leather sleeves, and he’d covered those with a brown tunic that was currently stained with berries. He’d been wearing a hat when they’d gone berry picking; he often wore one to avoid the attention his fair hair could draw. But it too had been covered in berries and he’d taken it off near the river, so now his hair was blowing free of one of Kashel’s braids and strands of it flitted across his face.

“You remember,” said Laurent. “How I asked you for a favor.”

“Yes.”

“I need to tell you what the favor is,” said Laurent.

“Yes?” Damianos squeezed his hand encouragingly.

“Four years ago,” said Laurent, “there was a coup in Arles, and it was announced that both of the princes had died.”

Damianos was frowning, this was apparently not the conversational direction he had anticipated.

Laurent continued. “Except the younger prince didn’t die. He’s alive, and I know where he is.”

Damianos’s eyes widened. “There were lots of rumors about--” he seemed to be thinking, placing this new information from Laurent in context with the rest of what he knew. “He would be the rightful King of Vere, then,” said Damianos. 

Laurent nodded. “The favor that I want, is for you to help me restore him to his throne.”

Damianos was still frowning, thinking.

Laurent had anticipated this. “When I spoke with the prince about this, he anticipated that you might wonder what would be the advantage for Akielos, in this favor.”

Damianos looked into Laurent’s eyes. “Is there an advantage to Akielos?”

“The prince said,” said Laurent. “That if you aided him, and he was restored to his throne, that he would cede Delpha to Akielos.”

Damianos raised an eyebrow. “That’s--generous.” It wasn’t, really. Laurent had no claim to Delpha when he was believed to be dead and in hiding in Vask, so promising it away if he were actually restored to the throne seemed trivial. He didn’t need Delpha to take revenge on his uncle. 

“The prince would also owe you a favor, then,” said Laurent.

Damianos nodded slowly. “I would like to meet this prince. To know what kind of person he is.”

“It would not be safe for you to meet yet,” said Laurent. “But I can tell you about him, if you wish to ask me a question.”

Damianos sat down on a large flat rock and tugged on Laurent’s hand. Laurent sat down next to him. Damianos had still not let go of his hand. They were seated close enough that if Damianos moved his leg a hand’s span their thighs would press against each other. Damianos rested their joined hands on his leg. 

After a while, Damianos turned to look at Laurent. Laurent remembered when they had kissed and the feel of his lips. A strand of hair fell in his face. 

“This is what you want?” said Damianos. 

Laurent nodded. This was what he had wanted ever since that terrible moment when he saw Auguste fall to the ground. 

“Tell me the plan,” said Damianos.


	7. Chapter 7

They spoke for a long time. Laurent explained the plan and Damianos asked careful, thoughtful questions. Then Damianos asked questions about the prince, and Laurent talked about himself in the third person.

Toward twilight, they went back to the camp. Laurent hadn’t eaten anything that day besides berries, but there was little time to eat when they returned. Damianos had to return to his own men or they would worry, he explained, and they were now agreed that when Damianos left, Laurent would go with him.

Halvik agreed to Laurent’s desire to leave the camp with a grunt and a muttered blessing. Kashel and many of the others hugged him, and Laurent tried to quickly fill a pack with any things that he might need. He had few possessions, but he had a small pouch in which he kept some personal keepsakes, and he made sure to grab it. He felt over the pouch, checking to ensure that the object he needed was still inside, and when he felt its shape, he tucked the pouch on his belt and under his tunic for safekeeping.

Lensk seemed distressed again, and Kashel was holding him. “Is Sparrow leaving to go to the men’s camp too?” Lensk wailed, and Laurent gave him a small wooden disc he’d carved as a token. 

Damianos had only brought one horse, so they rode together when they left. Laurent wondered again absently if Damianos’s mare had a name. He thought about asking, but he remained quiet because he did not want to be disappointed.

It was dark by the time they reached the Akielons. Laurent’s arrival at the camp with Damianos had clearly not been anticipated. Laurent could tell from the look on Nikandros’s face alone. Damianos gave short instructions to his men about the care of his horse—though Laurent would have gladly taken that chore himself—and about finding a spot for his guest and his guest's things, and then Damianos allowed himself to be drawn away by his frowning second-in-command, likely for some sort of lecture.

Laurent took in the arrangement of the Akielon camp by torchlight. He’d seen Akielon camps before while on patrol or when planning a raid. He’d perched high up in the foothills and watched the men scurry around setting up tents in a circle and arranging their supplies and setting their fires and then the following day undoing all of it only to do it all again. The Akielons seemed to consider making camp and unmaking camp some kind of drill to be often repeated. Laurent had a vague sense that the Veretian army did the same; but in Vask the only reason to make camp was that they had moved, and that happened often enough that there was no need to repeat the chore artificially.

The group was large for a border patrol but small in comparison to the full potential of the Akielon army; there were perhaps fifty people. There were between thirty and forty soldiers, Laurent counted, and there were a handful of others working in the camp as well. He saw some women pulling dry clothing off of lines and some boys assisting a cook in cleaning up after a meal.

Pallas was assigned to find a place for Laurent, and he asked first if there was a place that Laurent would prefer. Laurent had packed one of the small Vaskian traveling tents, the kind that wrapped into a tiny bundle of poles and hides but that formed a small triangle over a sleeping woman when assembled. He was prepared to stay anywhere, he told Pallas. Wherever he would be least disturbed and not interfere with the rest of the camp.

Pallas considered this for a moment, and then led him to an already assembled tent; the largest in the formation. Laurent thought they were pausing to fetch something, at first, and he didn’t understand until Pallas left him inside the tent, and then it dawned on him. He was to stay in the prince’s personal quarters. 

Laurent considered this for a moment. Everyone would assume that they were sleeping together; Pallas probably already assumed this, which was why he led Laurent here. But there was little consequence to such assumption, strangely. The Akielons did not worry about bastardy as the Veretians did, and there would be no associated stigma tainting Laurent for his willingness to consort with Damianos if they were not married. 

Damianos’s brother was a bastard, Laurent remembered. Laurent did intend to return to Vere, where they would care if he left a trail of bastards in his wake, but at that point his time with the Vaskians was likely to cause far more of a scandal than staying in the tent of the Akielon prince. So Laurent thought to himself that the inside of Damianos’s tent was as good a place as any to assemble his own tiny dwelling, and he did so. 

When Laurent had been small, his nursery had contained a beautiful dollhouse; a gift from his mother’s family with the thinking that her second child might be a girl. Laurent had disappointed the hopes of those who wanted to dote on a princess, but his mother had let him play with the dollhouse anyway and he had loved it. 

His small shelter in the middle of Damianos’s larger war tent now reminded him of that tiny dollhouse in the center of the palace at Arles.

Laurent thought about leaving the tent and searching for some food, but the effort to do so seemed overwhelming. He climbed into his tent, instead.

The tent was familiar but he could tell that it was in an unfamiliar place. The shadows on the hide were strange, there was a scent of smoke from the brazier in the prince’s tent, and beyond he could hear men’s voices. He lay awake and waited for sleep to come.

When Damianos arrived, Laurent hear him enter with a sure step, but then his footfalls paused. He had presumably noticed the tent Laurent had set up in the middle of his living space. “Oh--,” said Damianos. “I didn’t mean---”

Laurent pretended to be asleep and didn’t respond, and after a moment, Damianos moved more quietly throughout the tent, toward the corner where Laurent had seen a pallet.

It was more familiar to Laurent to have the sounds of another person nearby, and he found himself subconsciously listening to Damianos’s breathing until he fell asleep.

The patrol departed the following day. The men dismantled the camp again, in far more time than it took Laurent to pack his tent up and replace it in his pack. This gave Laurent extra time to eat breakfast, where, after all of the men had been served, Laurent went back to the line a second time for another serving, and no one rebuked him. He had been prepared to offer an explanation that he had not eaten the evening before, but there was no one who even seemed remotely interested.

One of the men whose name he didn’t know yet led a horse to him, and said, “Exalted says you are to ride this one.”

Laurent nodded, and he and the horse became acquainted. The horse was not as fine as Damianos’s own, but Laurent could not complain. Damianos had far better horses than Laurent had any opportunity to ride in Vask. The best horses the clan had were the ones they managed to capture when they periodically raided Akielon patrols.

Nikandros cornered Laurent his first evening in the camp.

“I do not say this to be cruel,” said Nikandros.

Laurent raised an eyebrow. Good news rarely began so.

“I wish to be honest with you.”

“I appreciate honesty,” said Laurent.

“You should know that there are many women who Damen has--” Nikandros seemed to search for a word. “Courted. He spreads his favors widely.”

Laurent looked at Nikandros evenly. “You think I will be jealous?”

“You will hear talk, about him,” said Nikandros. “Of other women. I do not know what he has told you, but you should be prepared.”

“All right,” said Laurent. “I will expect to hear that he has slept with every woman in the kingdom. Do all of the men in the camp sleep with their legs crossed, then?”

Nikandros huffed out a breath of air. “No. And perhaps...only the blonde women.”

Laurent repressed a surge of disappointment about Damianos’s disinterest in men. “Thank you for the information,” he said, and Nikandros took it as the dismissal it was.

They rode west toward Karthas. Laurent understood from Nikandros that this was part of Damianos’s original plan in coming to the border, to tour along the border region, inspect the forts, and--though Nikandros did not say it--determine if Vere was vulnerable to an attack and an attempt to claim Delpha.

Laurent did not object; going west suited his purposes also. He had several pieces of his plan that needed to be in place before the Akielons tried crossing the border, and if the Akielons did so, they were going to need more than forty men. The rest of the Akielon army was stationed further west in Sicyon. 

They camped a couple of miles from Asine, which was a small city on the Akielon side of the border. Laurent had traveled there with others from the clan a few times, when they wanted to trade furs or beads for other goods. He had never been there by himself. But when the Akielons made camp at the close of the day, he made as though he were caring for his horse, and then he simply mounted back up and rode away from the camp as though he were on a purposeful errand. Acting purposeful was half of the strategy to avoid questions.

He found the road toward Asine. He checked the grassland behind him for any followers and didn’t find any; he had slipped away from the camp successfully, so he made his way into Asine. There was an inn where the clan often visited when they had business in Asine. Laurent made that his first destination, and turned his horse over to the care of the innkeeper’s boy. His second destination was the market, which was closing down as he arrived. Farmers were loading up their carts and closing down their stalls. Laurent asked after a stationer and found one, where he was able to purchase what he needed: paper and quills and ink and wax. The wax wasn’t of the quality he’d have had if he were in Arles, but he supposed he would be forgiven for that. 

Once he had the materials he needed, he ducked into a tavern. He ordered a mug of ale and proceeded to ignore it in front of him, instead using the light of the fire and the materials he’d just purchased to write out three missives. He was starting with those closest to the border, he’d decided. They would be the easiest to draw upon for support.

He hadn’t written anything in a very long time, not since he left Arles. It took him a few moments to sharpen the quill, and then he wrote precisely and tried to keep the ink from smearing. He glanced around the inn to ensure that no one was paying him any particular attention, and then he drew out his small sack of personal things. He reached his hand into the sack and closed his fingers around the item he wanted, and he took out the signet ring of the Prince of Vere. 

Auguste had given him the ring after their father had died. Auguste hadn’t technically been the king yet--they were both young enough that their uncle had been proclaimed the Regent instead. But Auguste had the king’s ring from their father nonetheless and he’d given the prince’s ring to Laurent. Laurent’s fingers had been too small to wear it, but he’d put it on a chain around his neck and worn it that way, instead, and he’d been wearing it when he had run away from the palace.

Laurent used the ring to seal the letters, pressing it into the wax.

Laurent asked the tavern keeper about a messenger, and the tavern keeper pointed at a man in the corner eating a meal. Laurent spoke with him about delivering the missives, and he quoted Laurent a price, took his coin and the letters, and tucked them away. 

Then, Laurent was confronted by the house boy. He was perhaps a year younger than Laurent, had full lips fixed in a petulant expression, and hair a shade darker than Laurent’s own. “My name is Lanc. There’s only room for one boy here,” he said. Veretians sometimes mistook Vaskians for men because they wore pants, despite the fact that all Akielons wore skirts and it didn’t seem to impede the Veretians’ ability to tell that half of them were men.

“I’m not trying to take your job,” said Laurent. “Do you want to play cards?”

Lanc frowned at him a moment longer, trying to decide if this was somehow a trick, and then agreed to a game. Laurent won a few walnuts off of the boy before some new guests came in who the boy apparently thought were potential customers, and their game was abandoned for Lanc to go and speak to them. 

Laurent left the tavern with a last glance at the messenger and the messenger’s bag, and he headed back toward the inn where he had left his horse. Halfway down the lane Laurent began to suspect he was being followed; he ducked into a doorway for a moment and then down an alley and he spotted a man who was definitely following him out of the corner of his eye. 

Laurent scaled a short wall, cut through an herb garden, and came out on the other side of the thoroughfare with the inns. He spotted the man who was following him again, and this time he recognized the man, so in a fit of pique he decided to lead Damianos in a chase. 

Laurent went just slowly enough for Damianos to be able to reliably keep up with him, walking briskly through the streets, ducking into a brothel for a moment and then, when Damianos seemed to have lost him, closing the shutters of one of the rooms in the brothel to give the man a clue. 

Laurent climbed out the back window, though, and scaled down the rear of the building, avoided two women riding matched black horses, and then crossed the street to continue on his way. 

He was not sure how Damianos made it from trailing behind Laurent outside the brothel to suddenly emerging in front of him in this alley, but he collided with Damianos and the prince caught Laurent around the waist. 

Damianos pinned Laurent between his body and the wall of the inn. He was slightly out of breath from the chase and he was frowning. Laurent laughed, exhilarated from the chase.

“What are you doing?” said Damianos.

Laurent smiled at him. He glanced to either side to make sure no one was in earshot. “You know that I have been in contact with the Veretian prince.” It wasn’t quite a lie.

Damianos was still frowning. “I thought that was the tavern prostitute.”

Laurent was surprised; Damianos had been following him for that long and he hadn’t noticed. “Of course the prince is in disguise,” said Laurent. “Did you sample his wares?”

Damianos made a face. “I was worried about you. You left the camp without telling anyone where you were going.”

Laurent made a face back at him. “I suppose you told Nikandros exactly where you were going, when you followed.” 

Damianos flushed, which was enough of an answer. Laurent laughed again. 

“I don’t need a chaperone,” said Laurent, and he ducked under Damianos’s arm and headed out of the alley. 

Damianos followed two steps behind him, and Laurent did not bother to try to lose him. He reclaimed his horse from the inn and looked pointedly at Damianos until Damianos paid the woman minding the stable.

Damianos’s horse was at a different inn, and Laurent waited patiently while it was fetched. They rode back toward the camp.

When they were out of the town and the fields surrounding the road were dark, Damianos spoke. “Next time, if you have an errand, could you tell me that you plan to leave and when you intend to return?”

Laurent considered this. “If you have duties, will you detail them to me?”

Damianos had clearly not been thinking of this as a reciprocal responsibility. He opened his mouth, paused to think, and then continued. “Yes.” And then, to Laurent’s amusement, he began to recite a detailed plan of what he intended to do the following day as the camp packed up and Laurent suppressed a smile.


	8. Chapter 8

Damen was hiding something, and it had something to do with Sparrow.

Nikandros had been unable to keep himself from sighing when Damen had returned with her from his trip to say goodbye at the Vaskian camp. He’d truly thought the courtship with her was finished, ended by her disinterest and the impracticality of Damen continuing his pursuit. If she’d been an Akielon noblewoman with a reason for a lingering visit in Ios, Nikandros had felt confident the courtship would have ended in marriage, but Damen had at least seemed cognizant of the barriers between the two of them, and if Damen had lost all sense at least Nikandros had hoped that Sparrow was less lovesick than Damen was and would bring him to see reason.

Sparrow did not seem particularly lovesick at all, despite having packed up her things and left all of her people. It worried Nikandros more, that she seemed detached and cold, because if she was doing all of these things for Damen and it was not the first flush of infatuation, then it meant that she wanted something else.

Nikandros tried to observe her in the camp, so he could learn more about the type of person she was. She was quiet. She responded politely when others spoke to her but she didn’t go out of her way to introduce herself or to make conversation. She managed her own things and protectively kept her pack with her all of the time rather than letting it go on the baggage wagon. 

She was sleeping in Damen’s tent. 

She was observing just as Nikandros was, often watching the Akielon men at work or looking at how they performed their drills. Nikandros supposed it would be helpful intelligence if she were ever to return to Vask and apply it to raiding the troops along the border again. She declined participating in the Akielon drills, but one morning she allowed Damen to invite her for a swordfighting match, and she put forward an impressive front before Damen disarmed her. Nikandros could see why her fighting had captured Damen’s attention during their first skirmish. Damen was skilled enough that to see someone last even that long against him was a rare pleasure.

She regularly rode next to Damen. Occasionally she made a comment in Damen’s direction, twice she had managed to make Damen laugh out loud. Nikandros wondered what it was that she was saying. Once he was almost certain that he had been the subject of her latest smart remark. Damen had politically tried to control his expression.

Progress east remained good. The weather remained fine and they were able to travel slightly faster than their anticipated pace. Nikandros penned a report to Theomedes and then hesitated before he finished and sealed it. He took the parchment and went to find Damen. 

Damen was speaking with Makedon; Makedon nodded and left the two of them alone when Nikandros approached.

“I’ve written an update to your father,” said Nikandros.

Damen raised an eyebrow.

“Is there anything you’d like to add?” said Nikandros. He didn’t wish to worry Theomedes about something that he could do little about, particularly when the king was still suffering from his mysterious illness, but he felt a lingering uncertainty.

“Is there something you think I ought to add?”

“Do our plans remain the same as before?” said Nikandros.

Damen took the parchment from Nikandros and read over it quickly. “We are heading east, are we not?” 

That was not quite the same as a confirmation.

“Would you like to tell Theomedes about--”

“I don’t have anything to add,” said Damen.

“Are you certain you know what you are doing, old friend?” said Nikandros.

Damen nodded, and his expression was not receptive to further argument, so Nikandros took the parchment back.

Nikandros returned to his own tent. He stared at the parchment in the candlelight, wondering if he ought to say something to Theomedes himself. It was a difficult thing to say. Damen was correct that his father did not care what women he dallied with, and so if Nikandros wished Theomedes to note this he would have to indicate something about the depth of Damen’s affection, and it was somehow more of a betrayal to speak of Damen’s affections than it was of who he let in his tent at night. 

Nikandros sighed, and sealed the letter without adding anything, and sent it off with a messenger.

The next day, Damen announced that he intended to meet with one of the Veretian councilors.

Nikandros drew him aside and they stepped into the relative privacy of Nikandros’s tent. Nikandros dismissed his slave Isander, who was cleaning up inside. “This isn’t part of our itinerary.” Nikandros had his hand resting on Damen’s arm. 

“I’m adding it to the itinerary,” said Damen.

“Why have you arranged this meeting?”

Damen was hesitant to say, looking around the tent as though there were something interesting about the low pallet Nikandros slept on.

“Does this have to do with Sparrow?” said Nikandros, trying to keep his voice even.

“It is part of a favor I promised,” Damen admitted.

“Part of it?” said Nikandros. “What is the other part?”

“The meeting is tomorrow afternoon,” Damen said.

“I’m coming with you,” Nikandros said, tightening his grip on Damen’s forearm in anticipation of an objection. 

Damen nodded. 

“And we will take guards,” said Nikandros. 

Damen nodded again. 

“We will use the usual signal,” said Nikandros, referring to their code word for deceit or trouble.

“Nothing like that is going to happen,” said Damen.

“But if it does,” said Nikandros, “We will use the usual signal.”

“Yes, of course,” said Damen.

He refused to say more about the purpose of the meeting, but he was quite open about the logistics. Sparrow had arranged the meeting through some contact with the Veretian councilor. Damen had received a letter from the councilor; he showed the letter and the seal to Nikandros. The purpose of the meeting was not made clear in the letter either, which simply alluded to ‘topics of mutual interest’ in Veretian using an overly flowery script that was so ornamented it was challenging to read.

They met with the Veretian councilor Mathe on a hilltop outside the town of Alona. The weather that afternoon continued to be fair, and the hillside was grassy. There was little cover from the sun. 

Mathe seemed almost as nervous as Nikandros, having arrived with his own guard and looking around anxiously as though other riders might crest the hillside and overtake them at any moment. 

Nikandros realized suddenly that while Sparrow had left the camp with them for this rendez-vous, that she was no longer with them. It was now only him, Damen, and the four guards they had brought along. 

He sat more nervously on his horse. “Damianos,” he said softly.

Damen did not look his direction; Damen’s attention was focused on Mathe. 

The councilor and the prince spoke stilted greetings for a few minutes. Nikandros wondered again about the purpose of this meeting. It wasn’t exactly wrong for Akielos and Vere to meet in this fashion, but it was certainly unusual, and for the meeting to happen without the knowledge or the blessing of either of the country’s rulers was questionable. 

Mathe was a middle-aged gentleman with a short beard in the Veretian style. He was fair, with light hair and blond eyebrows and ruddy cheeks. He was wealthy, and it showed in his ornamented clothing, his golden jewelry, and the softness of his belly. He wore traditional Veretian riding clothes, which were more embellished than the fancy tunic Nikandros himself might have worn for a celebratory festival. Mathe seemed to have a nervous habit of chewing on the side of his mustache, and it was displaying itself. Nikandros knew of him as one of the lords with minor holdings along the Akielon-Veretian border, and as one of the members of the Veretian council and the king’s advisor, but Nikandros had never met him before. He was not certain that Damen had ever met him before either.

Mathe interrupted a comment of Damen’s about the weather. “Could we speak privately?”

“My men can be trusted,” said Damen.

“I think we can be--” Mathe paused. “Freer, if it is only the two of us.”

Despite Nikandros’s objection, Damen agreed to speak with Mathe alone. The two of them moved their horses out of earshot of the remaining men from each of their camps.

The two sets of guards eyed each other nervously and watched their leaders speaking across the hilltop. Nikandros’s horse shifted and he quieted her.

Mathe was speaking, and then Nikandros could see Damen nod, and then Damen was speaking, and Mathe shook his head. It seemed as though Mathe asked a question, and Damen answered it, and then Mathe asked another question, and Damen did not know the answer, and then Mathe spoke for a long time and Damen looked impassive, and then Damen spoke for a longer period of time while Mathe looked hesitant.

Damen took something out of his tunic, a paper or something, and he showed it to Mathe, and Mathe took the paper and looked over it, and then pointed at it and said something further to Damen, and the two of the examined the paper together, and then Mathe tried to hand it back to Damen and Damen gestured for Mathe to keep it.

They spoke a while longer. Mathe tucked the papers that Damen had handed him into his own breast pocket, and the two leaders moved their horses back by the guard.

Nikandros nodded at Damen when he reapproached. Damen nodded back. 

“We’ve lost--” Nikandros started, intending to call Damen’s attention to Sparrow’s disappearance.

“I know,” said Damen, and Nikandros heard his tone, and dropped it.

Mathe was still chewing on his mustache, and he spoke a few words with his own men, said goodbye to Damen, and they departed off the hillside in the direction they'd come from.

Nikandros and Damen departed in the opposite direction, followed by Pallas and the other guards they’d taken with them. 

Sparrow reappeared when they made it back to the Akielon camp, and Damen summoned her and drew Sparrow off to speak privately. Nikandros hoped that Damen was getting a clear explanation from Sparrow’s whereabouts during their earlier meeting, but he suspected that was unlikely.

Nikandros gave them some time to speak privately, and then a messenger arrived and he needed Damen’s attention again, and he went to interrupt them. He approached them, standing under a tree near to where Damen’s tent was set up, but they were engrossed in conversation and didn’t observe him for a moment.

“Exalted,” Nikandros spoke loudly to avoid coming too close to a private conversation.

Damen turned away from Sparrow and to Nikandros. Nikandros kept his eyes on Sparrow’s face. Her expression had been calm and stubborn when they had been talking, but when Damen turned away her face changed, and for a moment there was something in it of longing, something of the same longing and feeling Nikandros heard in his childhood friend’s voice when he spoke of her. Perhaps the feeling was mutual after all.


	9. Chapter 9

Laurent knew that Damianos was dissatisfied with Laurent’s explanations. His mission had been a success, though. He had conveyed another missive to Mathe in a format that the councilor had no choice but to take seriously, and Damianos reported that the man could be relied upon. At the same time, he had snuck away and found Paschal, who had been overjoyed to find Laurent still alive and well after so many years, and agreed to join with their camp in case his testimony on the events leading up to Laurent’s departure was needed.

“I cannot promise how this will end,” said Laurent, wanting to caution the man who had already done so much for him as a boy.

“I understand,” said Paschal.

“We might both end up on the executioner’s block,” said Laurent, wanting to be clear.

“I don’t think it would be anything so public,” said Paschal. “But I understand, and I want to help. There are times in a man’s life when he has the opportunity to stand up for what is right, and it is important to take those opportunities.”

“I wish more men thought that way,” said Laurent.

“I think you have found one who does in Prince Damianos,” said Paschal, and Laurent had said nothing.

He had thought on it, though. Laurent hadn’t thought especially highly of Damianos’s motives when they begun their journey. It had seemed that the man had wanted to fuck Laurent and had been willing to go to extraordinary lengths because of that lust. Over time, he had begun to see more depth to the Akielon prince. The prince was helping him though he had received no favors in return from Laurent. The prince was thoughtful, and considerate, and his men clearly respected him deeply. There was something about him that reminded Laurent of his older brother. Auguste had had the same bearing that Damianos had, the same natural confidence, and the same easy smile. It made Laurent uncertain whether he wanted to bed Damianos or to be him. Perhaps both.

Laurent retired into his miniature tent set up in Damianos’s much larger tent one evening and allowed himself to daydream for a moment that he could have what he wanted. He imagined for a few minutes that he were simply what he seemed to Damianos, only a woman from Vask trying to make her way in the world, and that his greatest ambition was only for Damianos to take him to Ios and keep him in comfort. Laurent could have had Damianos already, from the first evening he came to the Vaskian tent and Halvik arranged for the coupling fires. And he could have Damianos forever. 

He wouldn’t have sufficient court standing to marry the prince, but it would not have prevented him from having a comfortable life. Damianos’s father Theomedes had kept his mistress Hypermenestra in comfort her whole life despite the woman being too low born to marry. There was nothing to prevent Theomedes’s son from doing something similar; if Laurent had truly only been a Vaskian warrior he probably could have lived in comfort in Ios for the remainder of his life and sparred with Damianos every third day if he wished. Any children they had would have been well cared for in the palace, and if Damianos had never taken a royal wife, or if his wife had been infertile, perhaps Laurent’s children would have ruled a different kingdom than he anticipated.

Laurent had a Halvik-like thought picturing their children running around his calves for a moment, and felt a pang for children that would never exist. Could never exist.

He was being foolish, he told himself. None of this was possible and all of these fantasies were a distraction from his real mission. His mission was about Auguste and taking revenge for his murder. Laurent forced himself to remember his brother’s last moments again, the expression on Auguste’s face as he told Laurent to run. That was why he was doing this, he told himself. He wasn’t here for romantic fantasies about Damianos as though this were a play at the theater. He was here to avenge his brother and he couldn’t lose sight of that.

He heard Damianos enter the tent. Laurent feigned sleep. He could hear Damianos moving around, splashing water from the basin on his face, shedding his clothing in a heap, settling himself on his pallet and arranging his blankets.

Laurent took a deep breath. “Damianos,” he said.

Damianos’s movement in the tent stopped, as though he had frozen in place at the sound of Laurent’s voice.

“Yes?”

“I--” Laurent felt as though his tongue was thick and the words were far away. “Thank you.”

He thought Damianos might ask, For what?, and Laurent was not sure he had an answer to that question. But instead, Damianos simply said, “You’re welcome.”

Laurent took another breath. “I do not wish for you to regret...coming to know me.”

“I don’t.”

“I know that I have asked for a favor which has probably exceeded your expectations,” Laurent continued as though Damianos hadn’t spoken. “And that Nikandros probably warns you against me several times a day. But I am not--” Laurent swallowed. “I am not without affection, and I don't wish for you--”

“I know,” said Damianos, and there was something strangled about his voice. “I know,” he said again. 

“I wish,” Laurent started. He didn’t know how to finish that. There was a long moment of silence between them in the tent. Laurent started again. “I wish.”

The silence drew out again. There were sounds outside the tent, of men on patrol and the horses grazing in the distance. Inside the tent there was only silence and the sound of each of their breathing. 

“You wish,” Damianos prompted.

“I wish things had been different,” said Laurent, and he flushed in the darkness of his own tiny tent, grateful that Damianos could not see him. 

“I would like,” said Damianos, “to touch you.” His voice was slow and cautious.

“If things were different,” said Laurent, “yes.”

“I don’t understand,” said Damianos.

“I mean,” said Laurent. “I--wish we could--” he knew all of the words in Veretian and Vaskian and Akielon, and yet none of that vocabulary was helping him with this moment. 

Damianos’s voice was still cautious. “I would like to please you,” he said. “To bring you pleasure with my body.”

“You seem quite confident,” said Laurent.

Damianos laughed. “Yes,” he agreed. “I wish that you would permit me to show you.”

“Nikandros told me that you were--,” Laurent paused for effect, “experienced.”

Damianos sounded rueful. “I can only imagine the conversation where this was mentioned.” 

“I would have high expectations,” said Laurent. “If you were to please me.”

“Yes,” said Damianos. “I want to live up to them.”

“I wish that we could have sex without looking at each other,” Laurent said suddenly, with a burst of honesty.

“We can,” said Damianos. His voice sounded distressed and Laurent had a sudden moment of realization that Damianos was aroused. Laurent’s eyes widened. Damianos was still speaking outside Laurent’s small tent. “Are you touching yourself?”

Laurent was not. After a few secretive adolescent experiments, he generally didn’t. It seemed too revealing in the Vaskian camp and he rarely prioritized finding sufficient time and privacy to do it. He had a second moment of revelation that ‘No’ was not the answer he wanted to give to Damianos. “Are you?” he said, sliding one of his hands to the lacing of the leggings he wore to bed.

“Can I?” said Damianos. “I don’t want to cause offense--”

Laurent breathed in, then out. He liked the flush of feeling that accompanied the prince asking him for permission. “Yes,” he said. 

“Would you like me to tell you what I am doing?” Damianos’s voice was low, but it carried through the thin leather of Laurent’s shelter. Laurent hoped that the thicker walls of the prince’s dwelling kept the entire camp from overhearing this.

“Tell me what we might do together,” Laurent said instead, with another helpless burst of honesty. He had his right hand inside his leggings now, cupping himself gently. 

Damianos was stroking himself; Laurent could hear it. 

“Anything,” Damianos said. “Whatever you like.” He sighed, and then became more descriptive. “I liked kissing you, when you stole my horse.”

“I was just riding her,” said Laurent, smiling.

Damianos gave a low laugh. “I liked riding with you also.”

Laurent was still smiling in the darkness. “I liked kissing you also,” he said. 

“We could kiss again,” said Damianos. 

Laurent made a non-committal noise.

“I want to feel your fingers in my hair,” said Damianos, “while we are kissing.”

Laurent could picture that; he liked the idea also, but it felt almost too appealing. “You like my hair,” said Laurent, deflecting.

“Yes,” Damianos agreed. “I have a weakness for blond hair.”

Laurent felt inspired to a similar burst of honesty; Damianos was having a terrible effect on him. “I like how you look,” he said.

Laurent could hear that Damianos was smiling in his next words. “Oh?” He sounded amused.

Perhaps he should justify this, Laurent thought. “I saw you sparring with Nikandros yesterday,” said Laurent. “And you removed your tunic—“

Damianos laughed quietly. “You liked that? I shall do it again.”

Laurent rolled his eyes. “You will probably go tunic-less from now on; I take it back.”

There was a moment without words. Laurent became more aware of his hand. He shifted his hand slightly, letting his fingers cup himself with more intent. He could hear Damianos still stroking himself over where his pallet lay in the larger tent.

Laurent thought about getting out of his small tent and crawling over there. He thought about how he might orchestrate it. He would have to keep his clothes on, but perhaps if he offered to use his mouth Damianos would be distracted enough—Laurent’s planning was interrupted in his mind by a sudden mental image of how it might feel to take Damianos’s cock in his mouth. His eyes widened and he cupped himself more firmly.

Damianos began talking again. “If you want to—if it would make things different—I could keep my eyes closed, I promise.”

It was too close to Laurent’s own fantasies. “No,” he said. His own voice was starting to sound rather strangled.

“Is there anything I could do to make things—different?” said Damianos.

Laurent closed his eyes tightly, and bit back his first response, which was the honest reply that there was nothing Damianos could do. That was not the way to keep the man’s assistance in his quest for Auguste’s revenge. Laurent drew his hand out of his leggings. He spoke again, and he lied. “Perhaps.” Laurent let his voice be suggestive.

“Tell me what it is,” said Damianos. He spoke like a king, Laurent observed. He directed effortlessly, without even realizing when he spoke a command. When he spoke he expected to be obeyed. “I want to know you,” Damianos continued, and that sounded like more of a plea. “I don’t want you to feel you have to keep anything from me.”

Damianos might think he wanted to know Laurent, but Laurent was certain that Damianos would only be disappointed if Laurent did in fact reveal his secrets. Fortunately, Laurent was not easily tricked. “Perhaps if you earn it,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You still seem very confident,” said Laurent.

“I shall take my tunic off every day,” Damianos promised, and the tent echoed with the sound of both of their laughter. 

He finished a short time later. Laurent listened to him cry out softly from inside the smaller tent. Laurent bit his lip, and his hands were clutching at his furs, and he forced himself to think of his brother. He could still see Auguste’s face when his eyes closed, and hear the echo of his brother’s voice. _Run!_


	10. Chapter 10

He thought of Auguste until he drifted into an uneasy sleep, and Laurent dreamed of his brother as well. It was a dream he had had before, filled with the moments of Auguste’s death but tangled. Sometimes he was running in the palace quarters in Arles, and he knew that if he could only run fast enough, perhaps he could save Auguste, but the corridors were not what he was familiar with, and every time he turned a corner there was another maze of passages and he could never make it to his brother. 

Sometimes he confronted his uncle in the dream, and tried to scream at the man, but found his voice gone and himself unable to say anything, and his uncle taunted him and promised that if he would only say anything he would stop, and yet Laurent couldn’t force himself to say a word.

Running in the palace sometimes blurred into running in the city to escape afterwards, with his uncle’s guards close behind him and no Paschal this time to help him escape. Laurent was running now, through alleys in Arles that were as twisting and ongoing as the corridors of the palace earlier. It was raining, and rain dripped down from the edges of the roofs and made the cobblestones slick. Laurent stumbled, and he could hear his uncle’s guards closing in on him. He kept running, and he turned a corner to the left and the alley stretched out uphill. There was nowhere to hide, no shopkeeper’s carts, no sheltered doorways. There was no way to pull himself up to the roof. He kept running. 

He slipped again, and the guards were closer. Their voices were very near to him, perhaps only a few feet away. Any second they were going to grasp for him, and he was going to fight them, and--

“Wake up!”

Laurent opened his eyes. His breathing was very fast and for a moment he didn’t know where he was.

“You are having a nightmare.” Dazed, for a moment Laurent thought his uncle’s guards were still talking behind him. “Wake up, you are sleeping.”

Laurent pushed up the flap on the side of the small tent and rolled out. He almost landed in Damianos’s lap, the man had moved from his own pallet to next to where Laurent had set up his tent. Laurent scrambled to the side and got his legs beneath him and sat up, blinking.

“You’re awake,” said Damianos. He had a terrible habit of saying things which were obvious.

Laurent looked around the tent. It was dim. The brazier had burned down from the night before and the early morning light filtered through a crack near the door, but the tent was filled with shadows. Damianos’s pallet was covered with disarrayed blankets.

Damianos himself was still crouched next to Laurent’s small tent. He was looking at Laurent. Laurent looked back. His hair was as disarrayed as the blankets on his pallet. He wasn’t wearing a tunic.

“You were dreaming,” said Damianos. He reached out a hand toward Laurent slowly, an invitation. 

Laurent swallowed, and then rested his own hand in Damianos’s palm. Damianos squeezed it warmly and smiled at him. 

“Are you all right?” said Damianos. “Would you like some water?”

“Did I--” his voice was hoarse, and Laurent stopped to clear his throat. “Did I say anything?”

Damianos had let go of his hand and turned to reach for a water pitcher. He brought it and a cup back and set them in front of Laurent, then poured. 

Laurent reached for the cup and held it in his hands. It wasn’t as comforting as Damianos’s grip.

“Nothing sensical,” said Damianos, with a small smile. “You seemed distressed; I wanted to wake you.”

Laurent swallowed again. He had to be sure. “I didn’t say--any names?”

“Nothing that I recognized,” said Damianos.

Laurent raised the cup to his lips and took a swallow of water. His throat felt sore as he drank.

Damianos was watching him expectantly. Laurent did not know what he wanted to say, so he drank from the cup again. 

Damianos glanced away from Laurent and back toward his pallet and then back at Laurent again. “Last night,” he started.

Laurent could feel his face start to flush and he hoped it wasn’t obvious in the dim light of the tent. He opened his mouth to declare that it has been a mistake.

Damianos continued. “I liked sharing that with you. I hope you liked it also.” Damianos had extended a hand toward Laurent again, another invitation to hold hands, and Laurent hesitated, keeping his hands around the cup.

“I shouldn’t have--” said Laurent.

“What do you mean?”

Laurent didn’t know how to continue. He trailed off. They stared at each other for a long moment. Damianos retracted his empty outstretched hand and let it rest in his lap. Laurent tried to drink from his cup again only to find that it was empty, and he set it down. Damianos filled it again from the water pitcher.

“If you were to trust me with your secrets,” said Damianos, “I would keep them safe.”

Laurent drank more of the water. Damianos looked entreating.

“You are very foolish,” Laurent said, “to keep a snake so close to your breast.”

Damianos leaned back, looking hurt.

“How can I prove myself to you,” said Damianos. “You said that there was a way.”

“You are also foolish to believe all the words people say in bed,” said Laurent.

Damianos frowned. There was a crease between his eyebrows. “I want to show you that you can trust me. I would like for us to be together--”

What did that even mean, Laurent thought. How was Damianos envisioning a future for the two of them with everything that stood between them?

Damianos continued. “But if you do not wish it, I will not press you further--”

Laurent felt his heart race faster. He needed Damianos; he needed Damianos’s interest. He was dependent on the man for his plan to retake Vere to work.

Usually, Laurent thought a great deal before he spoke. He contemplated a plan by himself, and he followed the ends of it to each of the possible conclusions, and then he thought about how to manipulate it to the conclusion he wished, and what to do if his approach was jeopardized. And after he had thought about that plan, and about the others he might use instead, and had decided which one he liked best, he acted on his plans calmly and rationally, and they went as he expected.

Damianos had an infuriating tendency to make Laurent forget all of the plans he had made so carefully and blurt out the first thing that came to his mind.

This was a terrible time for that to happen, so of course it happened. And before Laurent had even finished thinking the thought, he could hear the words coming out of his mouth.

“Marry me.”

If he had surprised himself with the proposal, he had at least succeeded in surprising Damianos also. Damianos’s eyes widened. 

Damianos spoke slowly, as though he were trying to understand. “That would make things--different?”

Laurent had not thought it through in advance, but as his mind raced through the plan now it was not without merit. Marriage was impossible. The future king of Akielos couldn’t marry a random clanswoman from Vask. Damianos knew it; Laurent had overheard his general, Nikandros, lecturing him about just such an impossibility the other day. Yet Damianos would not want to say that it was impossible, if that were Laurent’s request, if he still hoped to win Laurent over to some other arrangement. And so they could continue in their current state, and Laurent could finish his plan to revenge Auguste and reclaim the throne of Vere, at which point Damianos would laugh heartily and be quite grateful that none of this had gone any farther than Laurent had let it.

“Yes,” Laurent said, warming to the plan. “If we were to be married, then we could be together.”

The furrow between Damianos’s brows was still there. “You mean, in a relationship.”

“Yes,” said Laurent. Was that not an obvious condition of marriage?

“And we would be together--sexually,” Damianos clarified.

Laurent kept from rolling his eyes. “Yes.”

“And you will confide in me?” said Damianos. “If we are married.”

“Yes.” Laurent had no intention of confiding any secrets, but he was willing to promise almost anything on an impossibility.

Damianos thought for a moment. The man was ridiculously obvious, Laurent thought. Laurent could see him pondering in the expressions on his face, visibly weighing different considerations, thinking about how to get what he wanted and give up as little as possible. He was terrible at subterfuge; Laurent suspected it would be amusing to watch how he tried to edge out of this situation.

“All right,” Damianos said.

Laurent blinked.

“I will send Nikandros for a priest,” said Damianos, and he started to rise from the floor of the tent.

This was--unexpected.

“We can’t get married _right now_!” Laurent objected, and his voice revealed his surprise.

Damianos sat down again. He was starting to look stubborn. “Why not?”

Laurent’s mind raced, searching for a reason. “You haven’t completed the courtship favor I requested yet.”

Damianos tilted his head to the side, considering. 

Laurent elaborated on the objection. “It wouldn’t be seemly. The courtship favor--”

Damianos interrupted him. “So after the Veretian throne is restored, we will marry.”

It was not a question; it was a statement. But it suited Laurent’s purposes so he agreed to it anyway. “Yes, yes. If you still wish it,” he said. 

“I can’t imagine what would change my mind,” Damianos said. He took Laurent’s hand from where it rested and raised it to his lips with a kiss, and then left the tent with a jaunty step. Damianos might lack imagination, Laurent thought, but Laurent could picture it all too easily.


	11. Chapter 11

Damen acted with new resolve after the meeting with Mathe. He emerged from his tent the following morning with a set to his shoulders and a stubborn expression. He carried himself with greater determination. He seemed more like his father, Nikandros observed. Damen met with Nikandros and with his other advisors and shared more information about what he was doing, and he conveyed the most outrageous plan to divert from their tour of the border to march their troop into Vere toward Arles.

Nikandros watched, astounded, as the men responded to Damen’s tone and bearing. Makedon--one of the most notable Delphan generals and also one of the most stubborn men Nikandros had ever known--nodded agreeably and stroked his beard after Damen finished speaking. Heiron clapped Damen’s shoulder and promised his support. Damen leveled a look specifically at Nikandros. “Old friend?”

Nikandros lowered his eyes. “You know I am yours,” he said, and then after the meeting he hunted Damen down, cornering him near his tent.

Two servants were disassembling it until Nikandros signalled them to go away. Nikandros made sure that Sparrow was not nearby and then he put a hand on Damen’s upper arm and drew him inside the tent for privacy. 

“Vere,” said Nikandros. “What are you thinking?”

“You said you were with me,” said Damen.

“You know I can’t speak my mind about how you’ve lost your senses in front of the others,” said Nikandros.

“I have reason to believe the Prince of Vere isn’t dead,” said Damen, in the same level tones he’d used with the others.

“What reason?” said Nikandros. 

“I will reveal that in time,” said Damen.

“This has to do with Sparrow, doesn’t it?” said Nikandros.

“Yes,” Damen said, and the fact that he had actually replied to the question and admitted it brought Nikandros up short.

Damen took advantage of Nikandros’s surprised silence and continued. “You have told me that you think she is using me to further some other purpose, and she is. She has asked for my help in this endeavor and I am giving it.”

“Damen,” said Nikandros, bewildered. “This is too much! It is too far to go for some clanswoman who has caught your fancy.”

“It is not too far,” said Damen. “It is an appropriate way to prove myself to the person I intend to marry.”

“Marry,” Nikandros echoed, dumbfounded.

Damen had set his jaw stubbornly. He nodded. 

“What does your father think about this?”

“I don’t know,” said Damen. “Did you tell him?”

“Damen--” said Nikandros. “You should tell him, but you must realize that I must also. To meddle in the affairs of Vere, to risk war, it could bring ruin to Akielos.”

“If Kastor and I were to die suspiciously,” said Damen, “Would you not want the truth of what had happened? And if I were still alive, would you not fight and risk everything to restore me?”

Nikandros raised a hand to his hair and tugged it in a stressed motion. “You know that I would,” he said. 

Damen refused to reveal any further information, and they argued. Damen paced back and forth within the tent and his jaw kept the same stubborn set. Nikandros found himself tugging at his hair again and again, and finally he collapsed on a heap of pillows set out near the brazier in Damen’s tent.

“I hope you are right, my friend,” Nikandros said finally. Damen was still pacing, and he paused and looked down at where Nikandros had given up. 

“I hope so too, friend,” said Damen, and then they spoke of it no further.

Nikandros returned to his own tent, had one of the slaves set out his writing supplies, declined an offer of a scribe, and began writing a missive to Theomedes. He hoped that Damen was writing to his father himself, with more of an explanation than Damen had offered to Nikandros, but it was his duty as kyros to report to the king directly and even if Damen’s intentions of marriage could be construed as personal news left to Damen to deliver, his plan to involve Akielos in the Veretian line of succession was clearly of political significance.

It was no easier to pen this letter than it had been the last time Nikandros had attempted it. Nikandros contemplated and rejected a dozen phrasings because none of them managed to do justice to his message. One made Damen sound as if he had lost his head, another was not honest about what Damen had said he intended. A third dithered with details of Makedon’s questions about Damen’s plan which were irrelevant to the point he was trying to make to Theomedes. After having dispensed with these failures, Nikandros wrote down blunt words with the facts as he saw them and placed his seal on the letter. 

Before he could hand the sealed missive to a servant, a messenger arrived from the palace in Ios. 

The messenger dismounted his horse. One of the men took the hard-ridden horse to be cared for. Damianos had emerged from his tent to see about the commotion just as Nikandros had. Sparrow followed a few steps behind him. The messenger fell to the ground in front of Damen to make his report.

There was something off about the man’s posture, Nikandros observed. He didn’t have the right form for bowing to the prince; he was bowing to Damen as though he were the king--the realization washed over Nikandros at the same moment he heard the man repeat his message. 

Damen’s father was dead.

Nikandros looked to his friend, who was now his king. Damen’s face was stone. The messenger was saying other things, details of Theomedes’s illness and the reports of the palace physicians. Nikandros listened to the messenger for a moment longer without hearing the words. It was hard to imagine Theomedes gone. 

Nikandros had first seen Theomedes when Nikandros had been a small boy brought to Ios by his parents, and Theomedes had been adorned with a wreath of olive leaves and strong as any king of legend. When Nikandros had been five he had seen Theomedes ride a perfect okton, a feat toasted for many years later, and one that Nikandros himself had never been able to beat. It was easy to remember the man who had been the living picture of every story Nikandros had ever heard about an Akielon king. It was hard to accept that he was dead, just as it had been harrowing to hear about him wasting away from illness. 

He should have fallen in battle, Nikandros thought, run through by an enemy’s spear and given a warrior’s funeral. He wouldn’t have wanted it this way. 

Nikandros’s eyes landed on Sparrow’s face. Sparrow’s eyes were flicking between Damen and the messenger. She looked genuinely worried, though Nikandros suspected her concern was more that Theomedes’s death distracted from whatever purpose she had for Damen rather than any tender thoughts about the death of her lover’s father. 

The messenger finished his report and stood still, breathing heavily, waiting on the king’s orders. 

There was really only one thing Damen could say; Nikandros was planning out their next steps before Damen even spoke. “We ride for Ios,” Damen said after a moment, his brow still furrowed, and Nikandros nodded and began to give practical orders to the men. They had to break up the camp. It would be fastest to take a ship; they had to send a rider ahead to prepare a vessel equipped for the king’s party. The guards at the Kingsmeet would want to know when the new king would arrive for the official ceremony; Nikandros ordered a rider that direction as well. Damen arranged for a personal missive to go to his brother about their shared grief. The camp was aflutter with activity and somber with grief.

Damen did not look to Sparrow. He didn’t turn to her the way a man turned toward his wife in a time of sorrow. He was seeing to his business, and Sparrow made herself scarce and prepared to ride with the camp. It was just as well, Nikandros thought. Perhaps she was cognizant of the distance between them and would wish to return to her people.

But when the march toward the coast began, Sparrow was still with them. She rode with her pack in her quiet way and stayed out of the fuss that surrounded Damen as he was approached with messengers and questions even as they made progress on horseback.

That evening, Damen was dictating messages to each of the kyroi and his scribes were taking them down. Nikandros found Sparrow on the edge of the camp sitting next to a fire, sharpening one of her knives.

Nikandros glanced around. There was no one else within earshot. He sat down next to Sparrow at the fire. She raised an eyebrow at him; his dislike for her was well known.

“You plan to marry our king,” said Nikandros. He was not one for small conversation or pretty words.

“He told me he wishes to marry me,” Sparrow said. Nikandros nodded; this was the same.

“Can I convince you not to marry him?” said Nikandros.

Sparrow paused sharpening her knife, holding the blade in one hand and the whetstone in the other. “What do you mean?”

“I am sure that it seems tempting to marry him,” said Nikandros. “You might think fancifully of being queen and the luxury such a position would entail. I am sure Damen speaks to you now with besotted words.” He took a breath and continued. “But you are not familiar with Akielon politics, or with the world of royalty. Damen needs a partner to rule by his side, to toil with him in the work of the kingdom. You will see when we get to Ios the demands that are placed on the king; that is his future, not dallying and courting on the border.”

Nikandros had prepared for Sparrow to be offended and flounce off, or run off to find Damen and present Nikandros’s offer in the worst possible light. Oddly enough, she seemed content to hear him out and if anything, vaguely amused. “You wish to frighten me with tales of what it takes to rule a country?”

“I wish to offer you another option,” said Nikandros. “I’m the kyros of Delpha. I can offer you gold and silver. Enough that you could live a life of leisure in the place of your choosing, with the lover of your choosing.”

Sparrow nodded. She struck her knife against the whetstone again. “I understand,” she said. “So long as the place of my choosing is not Ios, and the lover of my choosing is not Damianos.”

Nikandros nodded. 

They sat in silence for a moment. Sparrow continued sharpening her knife. 

“I will consider your words,” she said finally, and her tone was a dismissal. Nikandros rose from the stool he’d sat on by her fire, and left to find his king.


	12. Chapter 12

They were marching for Akielos. They were not riding at the leisurely pace the camp had taken previously, when Damianos had been dawdling by the border and inspecting his troops and having them perform drills. Now they were traveling in a manner intended to get them to the Akielon capital of Ios as rapidly as possible, and there were no drills. The camp unpacked in the morning, rode throughout the day, and made camp in the evening. 

They reached the coast, near Chalkis, and boarded the ship. Damianos’s men seemed to take for granted now that Laurent’s place was with their king, and once aboard the ship one of the soldiers gave Laurent a nod to point him toward the captain’s cabin, which Damen had taken over. It was not practical to set up the small tent Laurent had been using in the confined cabin on the ship. There were two hammocks in the cabin. Laurent claimed the top one and slept with his clothes on. Damianos took the other hammock without comment.

The same somber mood that had overcome the camp with the news of the king’s death lingered aboard the ship. The men worked without the joking or laughter that they had previously shared. Damianos was occupied with his generals much of the day, and seemed to have little time and attention to spare for Laurent. Laurent was not not as bothered as Nikandros probably assumed, and occupied himself with the work of the ship.

Laurent finished his chores one afternoon and then lingered on the deck, leaning over the edge and watching the water and the sky. He was lost in his own thoughts. He was wondering if he should leave Akielos. The further they sailed, the further he seemed to be from his own goals. Yet leaving Damianos when he was so newly grieving seemed also wrong. Laurent wanted to be there for him.

There was a commotion behind him that Laurent paid no mind to, and then he felt himself hit on the behind by a flying rope and he tipped too far over the edge.

For a moment he saw the sky and then he hit the water with a crash. The impact pushed the breath from his lungs, and the water was shockingly cold and all around him. 

He could feel the panic creeping into his chest as the air was escaping from his mouth, but then he burst to the surface, caught a gasping breath of air, and then promptly got a wave in the face. He surfaced again, and then a cork block on a rope landed next to him in the water, and he grabbed hold of it, and clung to the block and let the men on the deck pull him back to the ship. 

They hauled him over the side of the ship, pulling him and the cork buoy on onto the deck, and Laurent went in the matter of a few seconds from feeling grateful they had a strong hold on him to his usual fear at anyone else’s touch. He flopped on the deck of the ship like a landed fish, cringing away from all of the hands on him, coughing and protesting simultaneously, and then the men around him parted to make way for Damianos and Paschal to approach him. 

Damianos reached for him also, and Laurent flinched instinctively away from him as well, and then Paschal was reaching for him, and Laurent realized he was saying “No, no, no” over and over again.

He forced his mouth shut. Out of the water and in the wind Laurent felt chilled to the bone, and he was shivering. His teeth began chattering. 

“Sparrow needs to be warmed up,” Paschal told Damianos, and when Damianos reached for him a second time Laurent managed to avoid flinching. Damianos picked him up as parent might a child, cradling one arm under his shoulders and the other under his knees, and then shooed the worried looking men out of the way and carried Laurent to his cabin. 

Laurent was still dripping wet, the water trailed off behind them down the deck. As soon as Damianos set him down, Paschal was checking him over. Laurent was still shivering. 

“You need to get out of the wet clothes,” said Paschal.

“No,” said Laurent, because even when wet, the leather clothing he was wearing offered a degree of privacy and disguise that he wouldn’t have without them. 

“Yes,” Paschal said, the stubbornness in his tone reminding Laurent of Aryse, the healer who had lived in his Vaskian clan, who had had a similar no-nonsense attitude about uncooperative patients. 

Damianos was hovering with a worried expression, but he looked toward the cabin door. “I will give you some space,” he said, and excused himself from the cabin, and once the door was safely shut behind him Laurent allowed Paschal to begin peeling the leather pieces off of him. 

Laurent took the blanket from Damianos’s hammock and wrapped it around himself, still shivering, while Paschal wrung out his clothing and hung it on hooks on the wall to dry. Paschal asked perfunctory questions. Had Laurent swallowed any water? Had he struck anything in his fall? Was he bruised from the impact? What had possessed him to climb up to the mast in the first place? And did Damianos truly not know about him?

Paschal only spoke Veretian, which perhaps he thought gave him some privacy. But Laurent knew from his own earlier embarrassments that Damianos, at least, was fluent, and he hissed at Paschal to lower his voice. 

In whispers, Laurent told Paschal that it was impossible to fall into the ocean and not swallow any water. He didn’t think he had struck anything as he fell. He was undoubtedly bruised on his behind from the way he had smacked into the water and fortunately they had another two days on ship so he wouldn’t have to suffer on horseback. 

Paschal interjected at this point that sitting on a horse might be what he justly deserved for the foolishness of falling off the ship. Laurent ignored him and continued to say that the Akielon prince exclusively enjoyed women, and that Laurent’s plan depended on his assistance. 

That wasn’t directly an answer to Paschal’s question, but it was enough of one that Paschal leveled a look at Laurent.

“Princes are not pleased by deception,” said Paschal. 

“This prince is,” said Laurent, making his low tone a warning, and Paschal dropped the topic.

Laurent fell asleep in his hammock wrapped in only the blanket, and then he woke in the middle of the night to realize, horrified, that Damianos had come in and taken the other hammock while he had been asleep. He contemplated sneaking up in the darkness to dress. When he reached for his vest, the leather was still damp, so Laurent wrapped himself more securely in the blanket instead. He felt like a swaddled infant rolled up in the fabric, and he was still uncertain enough about the cover it offered that he slept fitfully the rest of the night. He thought fitfully about Damianos in the other hammock and pushed away thoughts of climbing in next to the other man and wrapping the blanket around them both.

He had hoped, in the middle of the night, that by the time he awoke in the morning Damianos would have already left the cabin for the deck and his commanders, ready to immerse himself in the day’s business and leaving Laurent sufficient privacy to dress again.

It was a futile hope. When Laurent woke, Damianos was still there. Damianos had woke before him, and he was dressed already, and he was regarding Laurent with a strange expression that Laurent didn’t recognize.

Laurent felt Damen’s eyes on him and woke with a start. He clutched at his blanket instinctively but he was already covered.

“How are you feeling?” said Damianos.

“Fine.”

Damianos nodded. “What happened?”

“I fell overboard.”

“The men said they shouted at you about the rope, but you didn’t listen.”

“I was--thinking,” said Laurent.

“Thinking?”

Laurent tightened his fist in the blanket. “Yes.”

“What about?”

He’d been thinking about Damianos, but Laurent didn’t much feel like admitting that. “About restoring the rightful Prince of Vere to his throne.”

Damianos nodded again. “I have not forgotten my promise to assist you with that,” he said. “But I must see to my people.” He reached for Laurent, and brushed his hand against the back of Laurent’s. “I was so worried for you, when they yelled that someone had gone overboard and I couldn’t see you on the deck.”

Laurent felt his face start to pink. He felt warmed by Damianos’s concern, somehow. “I am fine,” he said, reassuring the prince. The rest of the journey by ship passed without incident. 

They landed on the western coast of Akielos, which was an area Laurent had never seen before. The land was hilly and the waves beat choppily against the cliffs. Damianos was greeted warmly by his people, who acclaimed him as the king. They threw themselves to the ground in the Akielon style as he approached, and Damianos acknowledged them gracefully, with the manner of one raised to kingship since birth.

They had still a few days of travel before they would reach the Akielon capital. On their second day of travel, they planned to stay for the evening in the home of one of Damianos’s friends, a member of the Akielon nobility named Timon. 

When they arrived, they found that Timon was not home. He was visiting his mother’s estate. But his house was occupied, and when they entered the courtyard to find a woman seated on a bench, Laurent noted that Nikandros did not seem pleased.

The woman didn’t throw herself to the ground the way many of Damianos’s people had. She was reclined on a marble bench covered with cushions under the shade of a convenient olive tree. She had a drink in her hand. She was young--perhaps Laurent’s own age--and she had fair hair and sharp features. She wore a white linen dress. It was gathered at the shoulder with a golden pin and fell loose over the rest of her body. Her hair was pulled up into an artful arrangement on the top of her head, and her neck was adorned with a pearl necklace.

“Exalted,” she said. Laurent had learned it was the traditional address for the king, but she let the word drop from her lips with an arch tone.

Damianos looked as though he had sucked on a lemon. “Jokaste.”

Laurent looked over at the woman with increased interest. Damianos hadn’t mentioned his former lover to Laurent in the few weeks they’d known each other, but the Akielon camp had been full of talk about her when they did not know that Laurent was in earshot. 

The camp’s opinions were split. Some of the men had been enamored of her looks, and now, in front of her, Laurent could see why. Others of the men were frightened of her sharp tongue, and Laurent suspected he was about to receive a taste of that as well. Some of the men spoke of her respectfully, in honor of her rank and status. Others of the men were disrespectful, feeling that her treatment of their prince was unforgivable.

According to the stories Laurent heard, Jokaste had a year prior been well established as the prince’s mistress and possibly even a candidate to become his wife. Some of the men professed she and Damianos had been engaged, others had said it wasn’t official. In any case, the men agreed that a marriage would not have been surprising. Damianos had been smitten; Jokaste was the daughter of a minor lord and while not bringing a strategically important territory to the match, she had enough noble blood to become the next queen.

Then, Jokaste had been discovered in a compromising sexual position with Damianos’s brother by Damianos and Nikandros themselves. Damianos had broken off his relationship with Jokaste at that point, regardless of what its status had been prior, and Jokaste had apparently taken up publically with Kastor. When she turned out to be pregnant, the resulting scandal had been part of what had driven Damianos off to the border with his friend. 

The parentage of Jokaste’s child had been a topic of several hushed wagers that Laurent had overheard. No one was willing to say anything within Damianos’s earshot but there was plenty of speculation when he was not around.

In her seated position, Jokaste’s dress draped over her figure in a way that disguised her figure. The curves of her breasts were obvious in the fold of the low neckline, but her stomach was hidden in a swath of fabric while she was seated. 

After a moment of gazing evenly on Damianos -- without the usual bowing and kneeling his subjects displayed -- she stood. Laurent watched the fall of her dress. He had seen many women about to give birth in the clan, and he had seen them with their children at their breasts, and he was fairly confident that Jokaste had very recently given birth. He wondered where the child was, and if the child’s early arrival settled any of the wagers between Damianos’s men. 

“You’re not welcome here.” There was a firm tone to Damianos’s voice that Laurent hadn’t heard before.

“Things are different now,” said Jokaste. 

“You have grown tired of my brother?” 

“Kastor was a mistake,” said Jokaste.

“Kastor and I have apparently both made the same mistake,” said Damianos, “of thinking that you cared for us.”

“Kastor does not care for you,” said Jokaste. “He conspires with Vere to take your throne.”

In Vere, such a pronouncement would have caused a murmur of reaction. The Akielons were all silent, watching Damianos.

There was a storm of emotion on Damianos’s face, and it was a long moment before he spoke. “You warn me of his treason to restore your previous position?”

Jokaste didn’t directly answer that question. “You are headed into a trap.”

Laurent felt there was an important topic that was not being discussed. “Where’s the child?” he asked. 

Everyone turned to look at Laurent first, probably because he spoke out of turn, and then back to Jokaste. 

Jokaste seemed prepared to ignore him, and Nikandros put a hand on Laurent’s arm, probably prepared to have him removed. Laurent was not worried. Once he had given voice to the question the effect was the same. 

“When you continue to Ios--” said Jokaste.

“The child has come?” said Damianos, interrupting.

Jokaste’s eyes were still on Laurent. “Who’s this?” she said. Laurent could feel her gaze and he met it. She looked into his eyes for a moment and then her eyes flicked down his body, taking in how he was dressed, and back up to his face. “We could be twins,” she said, marveling, and then adjusted the drape of her shawl in a way that somehow managed to call attention to her cleavage and said, “Almost.” She turned her eyes back to Damianos. “Have you slept with all the blonds in Akielos already? You’re importing them now?”

“The child is born?” said Damianos.

Jokaste paused. “Yes.”

“And where is it?”

“Not here.”

“Where?”

Jokaste stood. “I don’t like how you are speaking to me. Perhaps we would be better able to have a civil conversation after you’ve washed and eaten.”

Nikandros moved his restraining hand from Laurent’s arm to Damianos’s shoulder. Damianos turned away from Jokaste in a dismissal and Nikandros began signalling the men about the keep.

Laurent found one of Damianos’s squires and the boy showed him to the room that had been allotted. Laurent had taken to assuming he would continue to set out his own small tent in the corner of whatever chambers were given to Damen, but here, in the heart of Akielos, the keep was large enough that the king and his paramor were given adjoining separate rooms. 

The squire left Laurent at the door to the chamber, and so Laurent scouted the chambers first for all of the exits and to determine if anyone was within. They were empty, and Laurent looked through the room that the squire said was his. It was small and the only place a man could hide was the wardrobe, which was only filled with silk. The adjoining door had a lock but it was not fastened, and Laurent went to the king’s chambers as well, which were larger, and had a window. Damen’s squires had clearly started bringing his things to the room; his pack was sitting on a trunk at the foot of the bed and one of his capes was hanging from a hook on the wall.

Laurent returned to his own chamber. He inspected how the lock between the rooms worked, flipped it, and then returned to the chamber he’d been assigned and searched the wardrobe in more depth.

It was equipped for an Akielon noblewoman. The wardrobe was full of four silk gowns. They were all made of fine linen. Two were white, one was a pale green, and another was a pale blue. 

How one wore one was a mystery to Laurent. They were swaths of fabric, where one or multiple of the sides were embroidered or fringed, but it was not clear how a woman would change one of the lengths of fabric into the type of draped gown that Jokaste had been wearing earlier.

The dressing table had a drawer, and the drawer was filled with small pots of cosmetics and decorated pins. Laurent supposed that the pins played some role in holding on the draped linen clothing. He opened a small silver pot, found that it was full of kohl, and replaced the cap again.

Damen’s squire had told Laurent that he was invited to an evening banquet. Laurent forced himself to think about practicalities. He could excuse himself from the banquet but he would lose the opportunity to see Lady Jokaste in action, and he did not trust her, and he in particular did not trust her with Damen. He could attend the banquet in the same clothes he’d be wearing for the journey from Vask. They were hardly suited for this type of occasion, but he could probably blend into the background of the rest of Damen’s camp. Eyes on him would dismiss him as a foreigner. Or -- his gaze turned again to the blue linen.

Wearing one at all seemed a terrible risk. He would need some sort of under garment, because the linen was not entirely opaque, and it seemed that no matter how many pins one fastened the whole garment was always going to be at risk of being pulled off if caught on a stray splinter or tugged by someone with lascivious intentions.

Laurent bit his lip and ran a finger along the gold embroidered border, thinking.


	13. Chapter 13

Nikandros spent a quarter of an hour trying to figure out how to convince Damen that he must not meet with Jokaste alone, and that he should take Nikandros with him. 

It was unnecessary; Damen appeared and said, “Come,” and Nikandros fell into step beside him.

They met with Jokaste in a small room in the royal wing of the keep. She had some ladies with her when they arrived, and she nodded at them to leave. The women packed up their embroidery and left. 

Jokaste turned her gaze to Nikandros, clearly expecting him to follow the women. He remained standing next to Damen.

Jokaste looked at Damen. “We will speak privately.”

“No,” said Damen. “Nikandros will stay.”

“Are you Veretian, now,” said Jokaste, “that you require a chaperone?”

“Tell me where the child is,” said Damen.

“Why, do you think it’s yours?” said Jokaste.

Damen’s expression was hard; he was stony with Jokaste in a way that Nikandros had never seen before. Nikandros had seen Damen trailing after Jokaste and winning the small games she set out for him. He had never seen Damen like this. He felt now as though he were with Theomedes, and he supposed he was seeing Damen becoming the king. He felt a wave of pride for his friend.

“Is it?” said Damen. “How many men were you sleeping with?”

“I have secrets for your ears only,” said Jokaste.

“Nikandros can hear all of your secrets,” said Damen.

“Are you no longer shy, then?” said Jokaste. “I can speak of the night in Theseus?” she trailed off suggestively.

Damen was doing an admirable job of not rising to any of her taunts, though Nikandros could tell he was frustrated. “Do you have actual information to share or are you wasting my time?”

“Your Vaskian lover has secrets also,” said Jokaste. Nikandros’s eyes flicked from Jokaste to Damen involuntarily, but Damen did not seem to have any reaction to this revelation.

“Tell me where the child is or I will confine you in the dungeon,” said Damen.

“The child has been sent away for my safety,” said Jokaste. 

“For your safety?”

“Don’t you want to know what secrets your little bird is keeping?”

“I want to know about the child,” Damen said. 

“I suppose you would,” said Jokaste. “It is yours, after all.”

“Is it?” said Damen.

“Yes,” said Jokaste.

“Can you offer any proof of this?” said Nikandros.

Jokaste only gave Nikandros a dismissive glance. “A woman knows.” She turned back to Damen. “You will know, too, when you see him.”

“A boy?”

“Are you thinking you’ll have more?” said Jokaste. “Has your Vaskian promised you others? Lured you to the coupling fires with the notion of a dozen strong sons?”

“Where is the child?” said Damen. “He is away for your safety, fine, give him to me and I will guarantee your safety instead.”

Jokaste curled her lip. “You will not be having sons with your little bird.”

“What I do with Sparrow is none of your concern,” said Damen. “Your concern is the child. I want him.”

“What sort of words does this Sparrow give you to keep you trailing along if you have not even been in bed together?”

It was easy for Nikandros to see that Jokaste was trying to rile Damen up. That did not give him any greater insight into her end game. Did she consider Sparrow some kind of threat, that she seemed intent on driving a wedge between Sparrow and Damen? Was this part of a plan to try to ingratiate herself with Damen again? Nikandros certainly had his own doubts about Sparrow’s interests and secrets but with reminders in front of him of Jokaste’s games it was easier for him to feel warmer toward Sparrow in comparison.

“I will treat the child well,” Damen said, and that was apparently his closing argument with Jokaste, because he turned and walked out of the room. 

Nikandros followed two steps behind him. 

They left that corridor and made their way toward the hall for the evening meal. Outside the hall, still far from the bustle of the kitchen slaves, Damen stopped and placed a hand on Nikandros’s arm. 

“Do you think it’s true?” he said.

“That Sparrow has secrets?” said Nikandros. “You know that--”

“That the child is mine.”

Nikandros took a breath. “I am not sure there is any way for us to be certain.”

“Would she have left him with Kastor?” Damen was thinking out loud. His hand dropped from Nikandros’s arm. “She would try to use him as leverage with Kastor also? Or perhaps he has already denounced her. The child must be somewhere else.”

A slave approached slowly, waiting for Damen to acknowledge her. Damen nodded after a moment. 

“Exalted,” she said, bowing at his feet.

“Yes?”

“The meal is ready.”

Damen dismissed her. 

“Do you wish to begin a search?” said Nikandros. “And what of Kastor--”

“I will speak to Jokaste again,” said Damen. “And I have already written to Kastor to tell him I am coming.”

They went into the hall together. 

It was not possible for Nikandros to forget, exactly, that Theomedes had died and that the Akielons were recognizing his friend now as the king. At least, the ones that weren’t turning traitor and apparently recognizing Kastor as the king. So it was not something that left Nikandros’s mind, but he was still not accustomed to living it viscerally, and he could tell that Damen was also a bit taken aback when they entered the hall and everyone fell to the floor. 

Damen took a breath, gestured for everyone to rise, and then proceeded to the front of the hall. 

It was not an especially grand hall. This close to the capital Timon would rarely have put on grand entertainments, and it was the small hall of a minor landholder. There was a high table set out at the front of the room for the king and a few companions, and the remaining men of rank were arranged in two parallel tables lengthwise in the hall. The lower-ranked men were eating out in the barracks or the courtyard, and the slaves and the servants would be fed in the kitchens. 

Damen took his place at the head table. Nikandros sat next to him. The commotion that had accompanied the king’s entrance died down and the slaves began to bring out wine and bread. 

There were two other empty seats at the head table. Jokaste entered, caused some hushed whispers, and seated herself next to Nikandros. Damen had already drained the first goblet of wine a slave had poured him, and he reached for the pitcher on the table to refill it. 

“More wine?” he offered Nikandros. 

Nikandros shook his head. 

“I will have some,” Jokaste said. Damen ignored her, and began to refill his own glass. 

Nikandros wondered who was to take the fourth empty seat at the high table just as there was another murmur of commotion across the room. Nikandros looked up, and a lady was entering the room. 

Nikandros didn’t recognize her at first, and he tried to think what other high born Akielon lady might be joining them, thinking through what he knew of Jokaste’s ladies in waiting and Timon’s relatives and not arriving at any likely conclusions. She was just to Damen’s tastes, though, he observed, and then he realized it was Sparrow. She was almost to the high table.

She was dressed differently than Nikandros had ever seen her. She was usually wearing her Vaskian clothes, the same tunic and leggings and vest that she’d worn when they’d first met her in the battlefield skirmish in the foothills. She looked nothing like that now, dressed in Akielon pale blue silks embroidered with gold. Her shoulders and arms were bare, revealing cream skin that clearly rarely saw the sun, and her legs were a similar color below where the skirt left off at her knees. 

She had done something to her hair that left it a combination of loose locks and coiled braids. Her lips were very red. 

Nikandros looked to Damen. Damen looked up a minute after Nikandros, and then he dropped the pitcher of wine he was still holding. 

The pitcher hit the table, rolled, and then shattered on the hall floor in a pool of red liquid. Sparrow evaded the wine spill and took her seat next to Damen at the high table as though nothing had happened. Servants ran in with towels to clean up the mess.

Damen had turned his head to keep looking at Sparrow as she sat next to him. “You’re wearing a dress!”

“So are you,” said Sparrow, nodding at Damen’s chiton, and she picked up a piece of bread, broke off a small bit and chewed it. 

Damen was visibly distracted during most of the meal. Sparrow acted as if she were accustomed to eating at the high table with royalty, her manners gracious and natural. Nikandros wondered if she were trying to make a point to him after his earlier warning that she did not know what was truly expected of a royal consort. Jokaste seemed slightly put out by the focus of Damen’s attention--and the attention of half of the room--being elsewhere, but she did not say anything about it directly.

Damen, perhaps in an effort to stop looking at Sparrow’s shoulders on his left and block out Jokaste’s comments on his right, drank rather more than was prudent. Nikandros signaled the servants to take the second wine pitcher away from their table, but his efforts might have been too late.

A performance began during the dessert course, a dark-haired slave on the kithara, and Damen was already requesting songs that spoke rather obviously of betrayal and heartbreak. Nikandros began to think of how to draw his friend away from the hall, and then amidst the smattering of applause and his preoccupation at Damen’s condition, he realized that Jokaste had snuck away from the table.

Sparrow was more successful than Nikandros at distracting Damen, telling him directly that if he kept drinking he was going to embarrass himself, and Damen managed to appear vaguely sheepish and declined his dessert. Sparrow ate it instead, professing to have never had honeyed pastries such as these before and apparently enjoying them very much. 

Nikandros left Damen to Sparrow and excused himself from the meal as well, because he had a nagging sense that he ought to go check on the men tasked with guarding Jokaste.

His instinct was accurate, but his timing was poor, and he found Pallas tied and gagged in the hallway outside her chambers and Lydos knocked unconscious from a blow to the head. 

Nikandros ran to the squirming Pallas and pulled out his gag. “Sir!” Pallas said. “She’s fleeing! And she said—“

He seemed to be nodding at his own chest, and Nikandros realized there was a piece of paper pinned to his tunic. Nikandros took it, and read Jokaste’s letter.

_Damianos —_

_Don’t come after me. Your brother is conspiring with Vere to take the throne and the Regent of Vere is in Ios already, waiting for you. They have the child._

_I named him Leon._

_—J_

He swore, left Pallas still tied up in the hallway, and ran for the king’s chambers. He shouted at Aktis to go free Pallas and assemble the men in the courtyard, and then he burst into Damen’s chamber unannounced.

Both Damen and Sparrow turned to look at him. Damen had been induced to lie down and Sparrow seemed to be trying to get him to drink some water. 

“Jokaste's gone,” Nikandros said. Damen sat up in the bed. Nikandros handed Damen her note. 

Damen read it, swore, and then handed the note to Sparrow, who also read it over. Nikandros wondered when a Vaskian clanswoman learned to read Akielon. Damen didn’t seem to observe that this was unusual, or to wonder at it. He also hadn’t hesitated to share the note with her. 

Sparrow seemed even more affected by the letter than Damen was, turning white. “You—the Regent—this is very bad.”

“I’m more concerned with my brother betraying me than I am with my enemy taking advantage of the situation,” said Damen. 

“The Regent of Vere is a terrible man,” Sparrow said. Her hand was trembling where she was holding the letter. “He’s ruthless and won’t hesitate to kill anyone when they are no longer useful--the child is useful to him now as a bargaining chip, but it’s hard to say how long that will continue.” She paused. “Also, in Vere, the Regent--” she hesitated again. Damen waited. “Are you familiar with the Veretian practice of keeping pets?”

Damen and Nikandros nodded. “The Regent had a taste for keeping boys as pets.”

Damen looked disgusted, Nikandros felt similarly. 

“You see we must reclaim the child as quickly as possible,” said Sparrow.

“Yes, though the Regent was already our enemy, no?” said Damen. “Are we not already trying to restore the rightful prince to the Veretian throne? Kastor is my brother and newly revealed to be against us.”

Sparrow sat next to Damen on the bed. “But you know your brother. You are familiar with how he thinks and how he fights, and you will have that advantage in facing him. You do not know the Regent of Vere, and he thinks like a snake, one trap within another, and if he is guiding your brother than the two of them will surprise you and trap you unawares.”

This was better advice than Nikandros had expected from Sparrow. He held his breath, waiting to see if Damen would listen to it.

“I never expected Kastor to do this,” said Damen. “I am not sure that I have the advantage you think.”

This was more honesty than Nikandros had expected from Damen. The moment between the two of them felt strangely intimate. He suppressed an impulse to excuse himself.

“You need a very clever plan,” said Sparrow. “To take the child and your kingdom. The Regent will know from Kastor how you are, also, and be planning for whatever you would usually do.”

“How do you know so much about the Regent of Vere?” said Nikandros.

Damen and Sparrow looked over at him again, both with surprised expressions as though they’d temporarily forgotten that he was still standing there.

Damen turned to Sparrow also, as though now waiting for her to answer the question. 

Sparrow licked her lips and did not seem to have a ready answer. “I have—an acquaintance—who knows the Regent.”

“And who is that?” said Nikandros.

“The physician Paschal,” said Sparrow. “The one who joined with our party after the meeting with Mathe. Paschal was formerly the Veretian royal physician.”

Nikandros nodded, his men had reported as much when the physician had begun traveling with them. “And how did you come to know a man who was formerly the Veretian royal physician?”

“We do not have time for these digressions,” said Sparrow. “The child is with the Regent; there is no time for thinking of anything but his recovery.”

Whether Damen was suspicious of this evasive answer or not, he seemed to agree with Sparrow, and he turned the conversation to their plans for what to do next.


	14. Chapter 14

Laurent was convinced that only an astoundingly clever plan would be able to defeat his uncle; the plan they decided on after a few hours of arguing was by all objective measurements horrible. Laurent changed his clothes and as he mounted his horse, Laurent had a sick feeling in his stomach about the plan and all of the many ways the plan might fail, but he also had a sick feeling in his stomach picturing Damianos’s child in the care of his uncle.

Damianos sent a messenger off to arrange the meeting and Nikandros assembled the men to travel to the Kingsmeet.

There were no such sacred places in Vere. There were memorials in Vere, of course. His mother had a garden in Arles. But there were no places with a tradition of diplomacy where even rival kings could meet and must vow not to draw a sword.

Laurent was not certain that such a place was even practical. How did they trust its tradition enough to risk everything? And yet they had no better plans to offer.

They left Nikandros unhappily at the gates outside the Kingsmeet, and Damianos and Laurent went in together. 

They had seen it from the plain as they approached, a marble building with high walls and stately columns. Damianos and Nikandros clearly considered it a solemn place and worthy of respect. Laurent could imagine what Halvik might think of it. She would think the stone seemed cold and unnatural, and that the plain offered little cover and poor grazing. Laurent could imagine also what his uncle was thinking as he approached; he would consider it plain and simplistic, lacking in decoration and refinement. 

The white-cloaked guards greeted the two of them and interrogated Damianos as to their purpose. They were both required to take a pledge of peace and they were decorated with white sashes around their necks. 

They walked on toward the Kingstone, and the solemnity of the place was having an effect. Laurent and Damianos only spoke in low voices.

“You should be coming here to be crowned,” said Laurent.

“In time,” said Damianos, with the natural confidence of a prince who was probably told from birth, _and this is where you’ll be crowned._ “This is where all of the kings and queens of Akielos are crowned.”

Damianos paused in their walk and looked at Laurent. “It’s where they are wed, traditionally, also.” His face was hopeful. Laurent couldn’t bring himself to meet Damianos’s eyes. He wanted the idea too much and he knew it was impossible. He kept walking. 

The white-cloaked sentries were now positioned in between marble statues of those very same kings and queens. Laurent looked at their faces, looking for any resemblance to the man who stood next to him. Damianos told him some of their names: Kydippe, Thestos, Eradne, Agar. He whispered tidbits of information about his ancestors.

It made Laurent want to share similar confidences. He wanted to tell Damianos everything. He wanted it with the same urgency he’d wanted to actually marry Damianos in this place a few moments before. To let himself smile at Damianos when he had suggested it and let the man step in closer to kiss Laurent gently, as though the two of them marrying were a true promise and not just another plan. 

Laurent wanted to stop in this solemn place where everything seemed timeless and tell Damianos about his own family. To say, ‘We are going to treat with my uncle and he is a horrible man who murdered my brother’ and to tell Damianos about Auguste, and how Damianos reminded Laurent of his older brother in all of the best possible ways. 

But there was no time for such secrets, and to share the secrets now would ruin the plan and the magic of why Laurent was here in the first place. Instead, Laurent reached out and took Damianos’s hand. He stopped walking, and Damianos stopped also, looking at their joined hands and then questioningly at Laurent’s face.

“Damianos,” Laurent said, selecting his words carefully. “It will be best if you meet with the Regent of Vere alone, as two kings parleying.”

Damianos raised an eyebrow, and rightly so, since an hour earlier Laurent had insisted on coming to the Kingsmeet even though Nikandros objected it defied all Akielon traditions.

“We are neither of us true kings,” said Damianos. 

“He’s not,” said Laurent. “But you are, regardless of whether you have someone with a white sash place olive leaves on your head.”

Damianos squeezed Laurent’s hand. “You will be also,” he said. 

Laurent shook his head. 

Damianos had assumed his stubborn expression. “You will. I have made you a vow, and--”

“I release you from it,” said Laurent.

Damianos’s grip tightened on his hand. “What?”

“I should not have asked it of you in the first place.” Laurent bit his lip. “It was...wrong of me. I apologize.” 

“I don’t understand.”

Laurent could see the doors of the temple opening, and he took two steps off toward the trees besides the walkway. Damianos refused to let go of his hand, and followed. 

“You need to go,” said Laurent. “He’s there. Be wary for traps and take care of the child.”

“But where are you--” said Damianos, and then Laurent tore his hand free from Damianos’s grip and fled off into the trees.

Damianos called after him, but then turned, and mounted the steps to the temple. Laurent waiting behind an ancient olive tree for a long moment. Then, moving with all the tricks Halvik had taught him to remain silent, he also approached the temple.

He might have sworn upon entering to not draw a weapon nor to strike anyone else, but he had made no such vow about eavesdropping.

He approached the temple and found a spot where he could perch in an olive tree and spy in through one of the windows to the temple chamber, past a white, fluted column. One of the white-sashed guards looked at him questioningly as he took up this position, but Laurent looked back evenly and the guard said nothing.

Laurent turned his attention to the proceedings in the temple. He saw Damianos enter, still looking worried and confused from their exchange outside. 

His uncle entered. It was the first time Laurent had seen him since his flight from Arles four years prior. It was the first time Laurent had seen him since he’d watched his uncle kill Auguste. Laurent had thought about seeing him again many times, had planned how he might arrange it, or what he might say, or had nightmares that his uncle would find him and how he might taunt him before he arranged for Laurent to also be killed. Laurent knew his uncle well enough to guess there would be a game of cat and mouse where Laurent was painted in the worst possible light as the killer of his brother before it was over.

He had never imagined it anything like this. 

This confrontation wasn’t actually about him, for one. His uncle looked different than Laurent remembered, also. Older. Heavier around the middle, with more grey in his beard. He had stayed the same in Laurent’s memory, even while Laurent himself had grown and changed a great deal.

Damianos and Laurent’s uncle both approached the center of the temple and the Kingstone. They spoke to each other. Laurent could hear the sound of Damianos’s voice in the distance but not the words, and he could see when his uncle was speaking but not hear his voice. 

The spoke, one of them saying something and then other. Laurent could see his uncle look smug and Damianos look frustrated and he clenched his fists so hard that his fingernails hurt his palms. He was not close enough to hear what was being said.

He was, however, perfectly positioned to see the assassin. Laurent saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, first, and he thought it was a bird or one of the white-sashed guards. But it was a man, dressed head to toe in black, and approaching Damianos from behind. 

Laurent dropped soundlessly out of his perch in the olive tree and ran for the temple. He thought he could probably vault through the window in the side of the temple wall, and he was correct, landing inside the temple to shout, “Damianos,” and Damianos turned and then ducked in time to evade a blow to the head. “Guards!” Laurent’s uncle shouted, trying to get the attention of all of the Akielons who were sworn to keep the peace. 

Damianos was grappling with the man who had attacked him, and he managed to get hold of the man’s weapon and was wielding it against him. The assassin attacked again, with a knife, and Damianos ran him through.

The white cloaked guards swarmed the temple, yelling at Damianos to drop the weapon, which he did, still seeming surprised.

“He killed that man,” said Laurent’s uncle to the leader of the white cloaked guards, speaking in heavily accented Akielon.

“It was self defense,” said Laurent, speaking the same language.

Laurent’s uncle turned his direction and seemed to take him in for the first time. “Laurent,” he said. 

Laurent stood a little straighter. He could feel Damianos looking his direction.

Their reunion was interrupted by the white cloaked leader. “He’s broken the laws of the Kingsmeet,” was the verdict. The leader turned to Laurent’s uncle. “As the king, it is for you to decide his punishment.”

“He’s not the rightful king of Vere,” said Laurent. “I am.”

“What do you know about kingship,” said his uncle, in Veretian, “spreading your legs like a harlot for--”

“Can you offer any evidence of this claim?” said the leader.

“What possible evidence--” Laurent’s uncle began. 

“Yes,” said Laurent, in Akielon.

Laurent’s uncle fell silent. Laurent avoided looking at Damianos, who was being restrained by three of the guards.

“Proceed,” said the leader.

“When I was forced to flee Vere,” Laurent started, “I was able to take my signet ring with me. And so,” Laurent peeled off one of his leather gloves, revealing the ring he was wearing. “I have the ring of the rightful prince of Vere.”

The white-cloaked leader inspected the ring on Laurent’s hand. He turned to Laurent’s uncle. “You knew his name.”

Laurent’s uncle tried to backstep, speaking Akielon again. “He killed his brother.”

“You killed my brother,” said Laurent.

“I am convinced by the ring,” said the leader. “You may determine the punishment of Damianos of Akielos.”

“I pardon him,” said Laurent. “I pardon Damianos of Akielos. He was attacked and acting only in self defense.”

The leader nodded. “He will stay here overnight. We’ll let him go in the morning.”

Damianos was taken away, protesting to implacable guards that he needed to speak to the others.

“That ring will be of little use to you outside of this ridiculous temple,” said Laurent’s uncle, speaking in Veretian again.

Laurent took a deep breath. “Oh?” he said, forcing his voice to be casual. “So I suppose you are uninterested in a negotiation for it?” It felt strange to speak Veretian again after so much Akielon in his recent past.

His uncle’s face gave away his interest. “What do you want, to be pardoned? No one is going to believe that you didn’t kill your brother--”

“I want the child,” Laurent interrupted. 

“The child? What use have you for some Akielon bastard?”

Laurent took the ring off and held it in his other hand, then put his glove back on slowly. “Are you interested in the deal?” He held up the ring. 

“You could have stolen that ring.”

“Both of us know that I didn’t,” said Laurent.

“It’s no guarantee that anyone else will believe you.”

“These guards did,” Laurent said. “Mathe did, when I spoke with him last month.”

“Mathe is a feeble-minded traitor.”

“You’re one to speak about treachery,” said Laurent.

“I will exchange the baby for the ring,” said Laurent’s uncle. “I can’t see what you will do with the child as a penniless Vaskian, raise it to be another barbarian?”

“Bring the child here,” said Laurent. “These guards will supervise the exchange.”

Laurent’s Akielon was better than his uncle's, so he explained the nature of the exchange to the leader of the guards. His uncle was to bring a child; Laurent was going to give his uncle a ring if the child was safely given over to him. The guards would ensure that the trade was fulfilled as agreed by both sides.

The leader agreed to oversee the trade fairly. 

A messenger was sent to fetch the child; there was a horrible period of waiting. At first they were silent, the white-cloaked leader of the guards and Laurent and his uncle. Laurent let his eyes wander over the temple and rest anywhere that was not his uncle. 

The temple was a central room surrounded by elegant white marble columns. The tops of the columns were decorated with leaves that supported the roof, which was painted with the same type of decorative frescoes the Akielons liked to use in their floors. The interior of the temple was focused around the Kingstone, which was hidden from view by golden curtains. 

Laurent looked at the white-cloaked guard. When he regarded the leader of the guards as a man, and not as an instrument of justice dispensing judgment on Damianos, he was more interesting. He was just a man, probably only slightly older than Laurent himself, though considerably larger in build. He was Akielon, and had the same type of nose that Nikandros had, though his hair was more of the southern style. 

Finally, Laurent began to think that refusing to look at his uncle was a weakness, and he turned his attention to the man. His uncle was looking back at him, and Laurent refused to look away, keeping his gaze even and running over his uncle slowly, taking in his face, his figure, his clothing. He noted the details of his uncle’s appearance to himself as though he were observing the movements of the herds and going to report back to Halvik at the end of the day, taking notes of what to remember without any emotion about what he saw.

All of the things Laurent had thought of saying in this event were going unsaid on his lips.

His observation did not go unnoticed. “Nephew.”

“Uncle.”

“What has happened to you?” his uncle said, and the question was not a compliment.

“I’m alive.”

“You were such a lovely boy,” said his uncle. 

Laurent said nothing. 

“And now what -- you are pretending to be one of the Vaskian raiders? Taking bribes to raid the Akielons and spreading your legs for the highest bidder?”

Laurent said nothing.

“What would your brother think, if he knew--”

“You aren’t fit to speak about my brother,” said Laurent.

His uncle smiled, slowly, having found a weakness to exploit. Laurent kept his eyes on his uncle the way a man would keep his eyes on a snake he just spotted in his path. 

“He was just as foolish as your Akielon. Never saw treachery even when it surrounded him on all sides.”

Laurent bit his tongue.

“It’s better this way,” said his uncle. “Those who are too foolish to wield power won’t have it for very long.”

They were interrupted by the return of Laurent’s uncle’s messenger, along with a woman holding a child.

Laurent’s uncle acknowledged the arrival with a glance. “The child and its nurse.”

Laurent gave his ring to the white-cloaked leader. “You will ensure the child is unharmed before completing the exchange.”

The nurse handed over the child to the guard. The child protested with a quiet cry, and the guard determined that the child was unharmed. 

“The exchange is good,” said the guard, and the ring was given to the Regent and Laurent was handed the child.

It was not the first time he had held a baby; he lived in a clan of women for four years and had done his share of holding babies. The child was large and seemed healthy for one only a few days old. He had dark hair and dark eyes that blinked open at Laurent. He mouthed at Laurent’s chest hungrily.

“The exchange is complete,” the guard intoned, but Laurent now had eyes only for the baby. Leon, he remembered. Jokaste had already named her son before she gave him over as a political hostage.

His uncle retreated with his guards and the ring, laughing lightly to himself. Laurent stayed close to the white-cloaked guard, holding the child. The child’s nurse lingered nearby. 

After his uncle had exited, Laurent nodded at the nurse, and made his own exit with the woman and the child. 

Nikandros and Damianos’s men were stationed impatiently at the gates. 

Laurent felt Nikandros’s eyes land on him and take in the child that Laurent was holding. 

“Where’s Damen?” said Nikandros.

“He’ll be coming in the morning,” said Laurent. 

“Why?” said Nikandros. “What happened?”

“This is his son,” said Laurent, reluctantly handing over Leon to the nurse and motioning Nikandros toward the woman and the child. “I am leaving them with you for safekeeping.”

“Leaving?” said Nikandros. “What do you mean?”

“I have to go,” said Laurent. 

“Go where?”

Laurent had no answer to that. “Damianos will not wish to see me again,” he said.

“I think we should all wait here until Damen--” said Nikandros.

Laurent was motioning to a guard passing by and asking for his horse. 

“Damen will want to speak with you,” said Nikandros.

Damianos might think he wished to speak with Laurent, but what was there to say, really? It was better if Laurent left now. He’d caused a great deal of trouble for the Akielon prince, but he’d retrieved the next Akielon prince and entrusted Leon over to Nikandros for safekeeping, so he supposed in a sense they were even. 

Laurent made eye contact with Nikandros. “You offered me money, once, to not marry Damianos. I’ll do you a favor of not-collecting, now.”

“I don’t understand,” said Nikandros. “You shouldn’t leave now. Damianos will want to talk to you.”

“He really won’t,” said Laurent. “Tell him--” he paused. “Tell him that I’m sorry, and that he should care for Leon and watch out for treachery in those who surround him.” A groom had arrived with Laurent’s horse. Laurent mounted, then turned back to Nikandros. “He might not be good at that,” Laurent conceded. “You will need to watch out for treachery on his behalf.” 

“Sparrow--” said Nikandros, but Laurent signalled to his horse and rode away.


	15. Chapter 15

Laurent rode toward Vask. He wasn’t certain yet it was his destination, for it was now certain to be where his uncle would look for him. But perhaps it was all right to go there for now while his uncle was going to be occupied in Akielos, and it would give him some time to move on to another destination later, when his uncle was more likely to be free to look for him. Or perhaps he should be going somewhere unexpected right away, heading for Patras, or for Kempt, or some other place where he had no ties and no one would have any reason to look for him there.

There were so many considerations, and Laurent couldn’t think clearly about any of them. He was exhausted and his mind kept catching on impossible things that he couldn’t have, thoughts of Damianos distracting him from the practicalities of what he needed to do next.

Evening came, and he made camp. It was just him, so there was no one to keep watch. 

The following day he fell in with a travelling entertainer, and the two of them went from Thrace to Yintos together, which Laurent thought was a stroke of good luck because his uncle’s men would certainly be searching for a single traveler, and also the entertainer showed him how to juggle four tiny sacks of rice. The entertainer introduced himself and asked Laurent’s name, and Laurent took a ridiculously long time to answer. He didn’t feel like Sparrow any longer, and there was no longer any sense to that disguise when his uncle knew where he had been. And yet he did not know who he was to become next.

The entertainer went on to Yintos in the evening to earn his bread and ale in the inns, and Laurent camped by the river. It was a clear night. He fell asleep looking at the stars through a crack in his tent.

The following morning Laurent awoke to a commotion outside his tent. He started awake and froze, listening. There was a rider, and a man’s voice, and animal’s hooves, but not as large as a horse, something smaller--Laurent rolled out of the tent.

An astounding picture unfolded in front of him. 

Damianos was there, and as Laurent watched he dismounted his horse with a careful hand to a package on his chest. He took a few steps closer to Laurent, and Laurent realized the bundle was Leon, wrapped against his chest in a blanket the way the Vaskian woman wrapped their babies when they left the camp.

Damianos untied a rope from his horse’s saddle, and he held the rope in his hand, tugging a small army of goats on a lead along behind him. There was a black one, and a spotted one, and one that was very determined to eat a piece of grass and refusing to be pulled along on a lead, and a tiny baby goat that kept bleating at Laurent’s horse.

Laurent blinked. “What are you--”

“Laurent,” said Damianos. 

“Why are--”

“I brought you a gift.” Damianos offered the rope to Laurent. Laurent took it without thinking. The tiny goat turned Laurent’s direction and bleated.

“But--I’m not who--I’m--” said Laurent.

“I know who you are, Laurent,” said Damianos. “I’ve always known.”

“You know?”

“Well,” Damianos smiled, and when he smiled he had a dimple. “I suspected, and then--I knew.”

“You didn’t say,” said Laurent.

Damianos smiled again, gently. “You didn’t say.”

Behind Damianos, Laurent could see the Akielon banner coming up from over the ridge. 

“Why are you here?” said Laurent.

“I brought you a courting gift,” said Damianos, nodding his head at the rope of goats.

Laurent frowned.

“If you accept my gift,” said Damianos, “I’m hoping you’ll let me court you with all of the grace and dignity that you deserve.”

The tiniest goat was now chewing on Laurent’s boot.

“This goat is rather small,” said Laurent, because he could not think of what else to say.

Damianos smiled again. “It was the best I could do on short notice,” he said. “Give me a chance and I will give you some better goats.”

Laurent swallowed. “What if I don’t want goats?”

“Something else, then,” said Damianos. “A favor.” He raised an eyebrow significantly. “A kingdom?”

Leon made a noise that was sort of similar to the bleat of the tiniest goat. The goat bleated back jealously. Damianos shushed both of them. 

“This is ridiculous,” said Laurent. “I’m a man.”

Damianos raised an eyebrow. “So?”

“You like women.”

“And men.”

“What?” said Laurent. “Since when?”

Damianos shrugged. “Ask Nikandros sometime about the gladiator.” 

“But--I gave up my ring,” said Laurent. “There’s no way to prove that I’m the prince.”

“I’ll give you another ring,” said Damianos. “Marry me. Let me court you and be my husband and help me fight against my brother and let me give you the courtship present I promised of helping to restore the rightful Veretian prince on the throne.”

“I lied to you,” said Laurent. “I was using you, to reclaim my throne, and--”

Damianos took a step closer to him. Laurent felt that his heart was beating too fast. Joy was growing inside of him and he was struggling to contain it, to not let himself get too excited for fear he would yet be disappointed. “You saved my life,” Damianos said. “You saved Leon.”

This close, Laurent had to look slightly up to look Damianos in the eye. 

“Also,” said Damianos, “I brought you a courting gift.” The goat bleated in emphasis, and Laurent couldn’t help but laugh.

“I accept,” he said, and Damianos leaned in to kiss him.

Nikandros arrived over the top of the ridge with the rest of Damen’s men. The goats were turned over to an unlucky member of the guard for safekeeping. Leon’s nurse claimed him back from Damianos to feed him. Damianos stole the pleasure of introducing Laurent to Nikandros as “Laurent, the rightful Prince of Vere” but at least Laurent got to observe Nikandros’s reaction. Nikandros half-choked while calling Laurent “Your highness” and Laurent refrained from smiling.

Laurent and Damen found themselves in an impromptu strategy meeting with Nikandros and some of Damianos’s other generals, and then they were back on the march--goats included--and the next time that Laurent found himself with a moment to think was that evening, when he retired to Damianos’s tent. He thought about pitching his own tiny tent in the space, but that seemed ridiculous and unnecessary, and he stood in the middle of the tent uncertainly, instead.

Damianos arrived also, saying goodnight to baby Leon at the front of the tent and kissing his forehead before returning him to his nurse, and then he also stood uncertainly in the middle of the tent, staring at Laurent. 

Laurent began to feel distinctly inexperienced. He had never gone to the coupling fires with any of the men who had visited the camp, and he had never accepted the invitation of mutual pleasure of other women in the camp. He had only Halvik’s advice to fall back on, and he was uncertain of its usefulness in this circumstance. Halvik had three daughters, and she had told Laurent once that she had only had to glare at the men involved before they knew what was expected. 

Laurent looked at Damianos across the tent, formulating his expression to be appropriately severe, and Damianos only looked back at him.

“Do you not know what’s expected?” said Laurent.

Damianos made an uncertain noise. “What are you expecting?”

Laurent did not actually have an answer to that. He watched as Damianos crossed the tent slowly to stand in front of him.

“Is it all right if I kiss you?” said Damianos. “I know we are not married yet, but I’d like to very much--”

“Yes,” said Laurent. He was not sure if that was what was expected or not, but he was unwilling to admit that he didn’t know, and he remembered the time they’d kissed before fondly.

It was not the same as when their lips had met for the first time on the back of Damianos’s horse. It was better. There was no rush, now, and there was nothing that kept Laurent from pressing close to Damianos’s chest as their lips met.

They kissed once, and then a second time, and then the third meeting of their lips blended into the fourth and into a whole stream of light touches. Laurent remembered Damianos confessing that he wanted to feel Laurent’s hands in his hair while they kissed, and Laurent moved his hands tentatively to Damianos’s shoulders, and then to his head, and threaded his fingers through Damianos’s curls. Damianos made a pleased noise that Laurent liked.

After a long moment, Damianos took a step back and sighed happily. “I look forward to once we are married,” he said. “I know you do not wish to--”

“I only said that because I did not think you desired men,” confessed Laurent.

Damianos took that in. “Are you saying you do not wish to wait until we are married to have sex?”

“I don’t not wish to--” Laurent was confusing himself. “Kiss me again,” he said.

Damianos did. “And more than kissing?” he prompted.

“Yes,” said Laurent. “Yes, yes, yes,” and he kept saying yes as Damianos coaxed him to lay down next to him on the bedroll the servants had set out for the king.

Damianos convinced him to draw off his clothing. First Laurent shed his tunic, and then his undershirt, and then his leather leggings and his small clothes. He was unaccountably nervous as he did so. He’d ingrained in himself such a fear that he couldn’t undress around other people, that they couldn’t know, that even when he knew they did know he felt that he must still keep his secrets.

Damianos went slowly and interspersed the undressing with slow lazy kissing, and eventually Laurent found himself both naked and undeniably aroused. Damianos leaned back from their kissing for a moment and Laurent fought an urge to cover himself. He felt exposed and forced himself to endure Damianos’s long gaze.

Damianos reached for him again. 

“You’re still dressed,” said Laurent.

Damianos obligingly took off his tunic, more quickly than he had removed Laurent’s.

“What do you like?” said Damianos. Laurent was somewhat distracted by taking in Damianos’s chest. 

“I--you’re very handsome,” said Laurent.

Damianos laughed. “Thank you.” He ran a hand down Laurent’s chest. “So are you,” he said.

Laurent blushed. He had agreed to marry Damianos earlier in the day, and yet there was still something surprising about the free way Damianos touched his skin.

Damianos was still smiling at him. Laurent dropped his eyes. “Kiss me again,” Laurent said, and he was pleased with the result.

Damianos abandoned Laurent’s lips after a few moments and kissed down his chest, instead. Laurent trembled, and then fisted his hands in the blanket, and then bit his lip, wondering if Damianos was going to keep traveling down his chest. 

He did. And then, when he had reached Laurent’s waist, Damianos settled his hands on Laurent’s hips and took Laurent’s cock into his mouth.

Laurent cried out. He had never imagined anything like this. He’d never experienced anything like this.

When he had dared to imagine having sex with Damianos at all, it was fleeting and quickly suppressed. He’d never pictured the kind of lingering kisses they’d already had, or that they would be able to lounge together entangled on the top of the bedclothes.

He’d imagined something rushed, in the dark with their clothes still on. The heat of the coupling fires and the beat of the drums. He’d thought that he would be trying to still trick Damianos as to who he was, or at least trying to mitigate Damianos’s disappointment with the revelation. The idea that Damianos might, without prompting, perform oral sex on him with evident enjoyment and skill had truly never occurred to him.

Laurent tried to get his wits about him, remembered again what Damianos had said about liking Laurent’s hands in his hair, and rested one hand on the top of Damianos’s head. 

The sensation of Damen’s mouth was overwhelming to Laurent, and the concept of what was happening was even more so.

Laurent could feel his suspense growing, and he held on to his wits as tightly as he could until he felt further from the edge. 

Damianos pulled away from Laurent and Laurent blinked his eyes open.

Damianos’s lips were red. He licked them. Laurent took a breath. “Roll over,” said Damianos.

Of course, Laurent thought. He had been waiting for Damianos to suggest that. He had actually been surprised that Damianos had not wanted to mount him earlier. He had expected Damianos to want to take him, as a man took a boy. It was the other things that had been a surprise.

Laurent rolled onto his stomach.

He arranged the furs under his head comfortably, and he could feel Damianos’s hands on his hips. He was expecting Damianos to move up over him, and so he was surprised yet again when Damianos stayed in his same position and leaned in.

Laurent felt the press of Damianos’s mouth and he made a noise and twisted around.

“What are you--?”

Damianos looked up. “Do you not like it?"

“But--” said Laurent.

Damianos held his gaze for a moment, and then, slowly, lowered his head again, waiting for Laurent to make any objection. Laurent said nothing, and then, he sucked in a breath through his teeth.

Damianos’s breath was warm against his skin, and his lips were wet, and he was doing things with his tongue that Laurent had never dreamed. He pressed his face against the fur covering of the bed and his fingers clenched in the bedding involuntarily.

After a moment Damianos encouraged Laurent to bend one of his legs up underneath him, and Laurent blushed at how exposed the position must be even as he cooperated. It gave Damianos better access, and he took advantage of it, reaching in front of Laurent to stroke his cock at the same time. It was only a short time before Laurent could not hold on any longer, and he tipped over the edge of pleasure helplessly. 

When Laurent turned to look at Damianos, the man seemed very smug. He kissed Laurent’s thigh and Laurent could feel his stubble against his skin and almost shuddered again.

“I’ve never--” Laurent wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, and he wasn’t accustomed to speaking when he was so uncertain. Damianos’s hand was still resting on his ass.

“I wanted to please you,” said Damianos. 

“You did.”

The smugness increased. It was not unattractive.

Laurent cleared his throat. “But what about--”

Damianos waited. Laurent could feel his skin going pink and wondered how he could be blushing again after everything that had just happened.

“What about you?” Laurent finished.

Damianos moved his hand on Laurent’s ass to suggestively place a finger where he’d been using his mouth. “I could--” he said. “If it would please you?”

Laurent had been expecting this all along, but he had not thought he would be asked about it like this. He’d expected it to be taken, not requested. He wanted it, but saying so was difficult, somehow. Damianos was still waiting, his finger still poised. Laurent felt suddenly shy. He nodded quickly.

Damianos smiled at him. He was still wearing his riding pants, and he rolled away from Laurent for a moment to peel them off. Laurent looked away reflexively as Damianos’s behind was exposed, then deliberately looked back, and Laurent could feel himself blushing again. Damianos crossed the tent to wash in a basin of water one of the servants had left out, and Laurent watched him go and then watched him return. Seeing him naked and aroused and moving about in his tent seemed just as intimate as what they’d done so far together. 

Damianos came back to the center of the bedroll having grabbed a phial of oil. He dropped onto the bedding and smiled warmly at Laurent. 

Laurent had one of those moments where his feelings for Damianos overruled his good sense and he blurted out words without thinking. “I thought you would hate me once you knew.”

“Knew you were a prince?”

“Knew I’d been lying to you about being a woman.”

Damianos nodded. “It seems like you had a good reason,” he offered.

“You are very forgiving,” said Laurent. 

“I love you,” said Damianos, as though that made sense as a rejoinder, and perhaps it did.

Damianos was sitting there awkwardly still holding the oil. 

“Well,” said Laurent. “Get on with it. It’s like you don’t even know what’s expected.”

Damianos laughed at that, though he refused to be rushed. He seemed to think that oiling Laurent’s ass required extensive attention, lingering over the task long past what Laurent felt was reasonable. Laurent was turned on again, and squirmed at the gentle pressure of Damianos’s fingers.

“Come on,” he said. 

“Perhaps a bit more oil--”

“I am ready,” Laurent said.

Finally, Damianos accepted Laurent’s assurances that he was ready, and moved over Laurent on the bed. He was resting against Laurent’s back as he positioned himself, and his skin was very warm against Laurent’s. 

Laurent was trying very hard to think about Damianos and to not fall into his memories. He focused on the smell of Damianos, and then Damianos took his left hand and held it sweetly, and Laurent focused on that.

The feeling of Damianos inside him was strange, at first. He wouldn’t have called it unpleasant, after how Damianos had prepared him to accept the insertion, but he felt full and uncertain. 

But it was tolerable, and he thought instead about what he liked. He liked the way Damianos groaned helplessly as he pressed in deeper, and he liked the way they were twined together on the bed, and he liked the way Damianos was pressing his lips against Laurent’s neck.

“Are you--” said Damianos.

“Yes,” said Laurent, trying to sound encouraging. 

Damianos took a breath and then he thrust into Laurent, and Laurent groaned into the bedding. That had--he had felt--

Damianos took his sound as an encouragement, and repeated his movement, and Laurent helplessly made a noise again, lost in a pleasure that he’d never imagined. He wanted to hold on to this. He had hiding for so long that it was difficult to believe that he was no longer hiding. He had been lying for so long while he had wished that he could have this that now he still somehow felt that he ought to feel guilty.

Laurent pushed up to balance on his knees and forearms and pushed back against Damianos, arching his back and fitting his body back against his lover’s. They moved together in a synchronized rhythm, like a dance Laurent had spied as a child watching a Veretian ball, or like the Vaskian women running in the hunt, or as Damianos and his men practicing their military forms in the early morning light.

Damianos said, “I have to--”

Laurent’s Akielon had deserted him, but in Veretian he said, “Yes,” again, and he went over the edge of pleasure again.

Afterward, it was Laurent’s turn to cross the tent and wash. He could feel Damianos’s eyes on him as he walked across the room. He brought a damp cloth back with him and offered it to Damianos. 

He wasn’t sure what was to happen next. Part of him still wanted to retreat, to set up his tiny tent in the corner and crawl into it. Damianos reached for Laurent’s hand and tugged gently. Laurent allowed himself to be drawn back down to the bed. He rested against Damianos’s chest.

They were quiet for a time. Laurent thought about how strange life was, sometimes. As a child trailing after Auguste to the stables, he would have never pictured his time in Vask. When Halvik had been training him in archery, he would have never pictured being here in Akielos. He did not know what to expect next. They would have to do something about Kastor, he supposed, but he was content enough in the moment that it was challenging to focus his thoughts on the problem. 

Laurent heard a faint bleat of the tiny goat outside the tent, and smiled. The bleat grew louder, and then he could hear the tiny goat’s hoofbeats, and then the goat ran into the tent.

Damianos sat up. Laurent laughed.

The goat hopped onto the pack of sticks and canvas that was Laurent’s tent, still packed up in the corner. The tiny goat bleated again. 

Damianos said something that was probably a curse, and then one of the guards ran into the tent. 

It was Pallas. He spotted the goat, cursed, then seemed to realize he’d just burst in on his king in bed and dropped into a bow, embarrassed. 

“Exalted! Exalteds! I’m sorry! The goat--I--”

“Get that goat out of here!” said Damianos. Laurent was laughing too hard to say anything.

“Yes, exalted,” said Pallas, who then proceeded to chase the tiny goat around the tent. Damianos narrowly avoided being used as a jumping perch. 

“And put a bell on it so it can’t escape again,” said Damianos, starting to laugh himself as Pallas finally got an arm around the baby goat and ran out of the tent with it. 

Their laughter subsided slowly into broad smiles and the occasional chuckle. Laurent spoke into the darkness. “I take back what I said about wanting more goats as a courting gift.”

THE END.


End file.
